Never After
by riversrunthroughme
Summary: I wouldn't turn my back on my shadow at any time...and since your shadow seems so keen on rarely being empty, I certainly wouldn't if I were you, Hero. [post Twilight Princess] [cuz a busted mirror is so totally not going to stop anything, silly Midna]
1. Prologue

Never After

"_Some choose to note the Sheikah were loyal guardians to the Royal Family._

_Others choose to note they are all dead, probably as a result."_

_- Various Histories of Hyrule_

It began with a rumor.

In fact, it began with a mere whisper. Hardly even a whisper actually, more a partial utterance, a tiny half-heard utterance. The faintest murmur of the very same delicious glee that typically restrains itself to elderly old biddies – gossiping over their neighbor's unhealthy fondness of hair tonics, or the questionable orientation of the latest minstrel in the district. Nevertheless, very same infectious nature seeped over into the discussions of everyone, young and old alike. However, the theme inherent in this particular whisper held no frivolities but a solid, series sense of perverse urgency. The kind that accompanies bad news, ill-omen or the arrival of in-laws.

Peculiarly, it made for a good conversation-starter over drinks and dinner during the night. All over the city it was heard, flitting like a swarm of humming birds betwixt the people, incorporating the basics of the tale into children's hand-games and seeping into the cracks of every home and establishment: "Have you heard about the rumor? About the Queen?" To which people would reply, faces vivid with consternation and delight, "Oh yes! I have, exceedingly. The latest is they've seen the assassin. In Hyrule even. Isn't that dreadful?" And right back again. "Dreadful! Dreadful!" even while children only yards away were chanting to the rhythm of their jump-ropes:

"Princess Zelda, sick in bed,

Scared the Sheikah'll get her head,

With a burlap sack he'll wait,

How many seconds does it take?

One, two, three, four…"

The aspect of his race oscillated between Hyrulian and Gerudo in adult conversation. Children ignorant of the word 'genocide' insisted he was Sheikah. The details varied intrinsically within each version of the story, ranging from the obnoxiously unbelievable to the frighteningly accurate. The most chilling rendition was recounted in the Castle Town Café by an Ordon goat-herder headed to market, the version where a masked man, cloaked and bandaged so heavily as to be mortally wounded, intercepted travelers at random, inquiring of them information as to the health of her Highness the Princess of Hyrule. When corrected on the young ruler's new title – her coronation had been four months prior – the speaker would laugh then turn on his heel and vanish completely into nothing.

But everyone agreed. The truly remarkable thing was not the ghost-like disappearing act, the report of his strange scarlet stare, or even the alarming number of sightings in the Faron Province. No, the truly astonishing thing was the unprecedented amount of _time_ this snatch of gossip had remained in circulation, far longer than some stray ghost-story deserved. Every passing week that it continued, an increasing number of people came to think perhaps there was more to the rumors than rumor.

Either way, like any really good rumor the thing got some momentum built up and sooner than later – the usual duration for idle chit-chat to work it's way up into high places – the bits and pieces of the tale had compounded indefinitely into a half-coherent story. No one could say for certain what it was that reached Princess Zelda's ears, who told her or how vastly correct or incorrect it was, but within the hour everyone knew _exactly_ how she reacted. In less than a single evening, every ranking rider for the Queen's Royal Messengers had been deployed to Ordon, each riding their mounts like hell itself bayed after them.

She sent all fifteen of them at once, each strategically staggered from varying points of entry into the forest provinces, as if something might bar their path and such a strategy would be needed.

And the Queen? She took to her duties and went about her business as usual, the only distinction of her anxiety being the involuntary tension in her every expression as she worked. The castle laundresses and kitchen staff frequented the city taverns nightly with daily reports of the young ruler's latest apprehensions, that she'd taken to bland meals and ate little and next to nothing throughout her day. Every time a messenger returned she would rise almost unconsciously to her feet, eyes fierce and urgent, only to sink back down again – as if pulled into her seat by an incalculable weight – when he reported his failure to find his intended target. Slowly each and every one of them returned. None of them found who they were sent to bring.

No one is exactly sure who it was she sent for.

_-never-_

Meanwhile, some several Realms over and a little to left if one were to be particular about the details; several other messengers were having a hell of a time making sense of their own mistress's orders. Far be it from them to protest anything requested of them by their beloved, if not capricious, princess (she'd declined to accept the full title as of yet. The marriage arrangements struck her too bothersome a task to be dealt with at the time.) but she'd become something of a pain to tend to of late.

Upon her return from the Realm of Light, having cast down the usurper king, Zant, assisted in the downfall of a great evil, and all-and-all proven herself more than capable of ruling whether anyone liked it or not (mostly they didn't mind) she gracefully reclaimed her throne. She'd changed almost beyond recognition; the indolent and impudent princess replaced by a woman every inch a queen in her bearing. The Light had wrought horror upon the Twilight, but somehow had changed her for the better, strengthened her love and dedication to the people of the half-lit world.

Aside from her sudden energetic enthusiasm for ruling, the members of her 'court' – the Twili do not have rank and title as Hyrulians do – found that she'd developed some oddities to stack upon her previously known oddities. Though her principles and disposition toward the light-dwellers and the people of Twilight had matured beyond their wildest dreams, the Twili found their young ruler still had a few emotional kinks to work out before they could expect any kind of reliable daily schedule from her. Thus, the pain previously mentioned.

She'd taken to long secluded walks through the Twilight, often lingering in a places were the barriers betwixt this world and the next grew thin and (if one were readily available) find a high cliff, or a morbid statue upon which to posture herself for hours. Such lonely escapades were typically followed by an enthusiastic – somewhat manic – bout of productivity, during which she made duty to her people her number one priority for a few weeks, occasionally slipping away again for another session of melancholic reflection. Those less kind would call it moping. The Twili could only speculate what precisely she was 'reflecting' upon, but those brave enough to hazard a guess to her face usually got backhanded across the Dark Horizon.

Proving that Midna had not quite lost _all_ her old vices – One of which was the appalling habit she had of giving orders without explaining to her underlings the reason for giving them in the first place.

Thus, nearly twenty odd members of the Twilight court found themselves busily delivering letters of summon to the most peculiar places possible and having not a clue why. She insisted at a single letter be sent through any gap big enough to allow passage from the Twilight to Hyrule, regardless where it might land. (Several popped out over lakes, volcanoes, rural forests and other places no reader could possible venture in search of postage.) Odder still, she addressed them not to any of the expected people – the Princess Zelda, or the Hero of Twilight – but rather to a one 'Sheik'.

From what they could tell, she seemed to be in great need of contacting this Sheik person, who was apparently a denizen of the Light. However, she lacked a reliable means of getting in touch with him or her and could only jam arbitrary letters through holes in the dimensional rifts and hope that they were found by the correct person, much to the irritation of her postmen. Cramming a letter through the dimensions is not easy, it takes much straining and pushing and more than a little bit of magical encouragement to get an envelope to successfully cross over.

If anyone had been brave enough to demand who this 'Sheik' was they may or may not have received an answer (read: back-handed across the Horizon) but Midna had gone mysteriously MIA. One of her late suitors had discovered a scrawled note in her throne reading: 'Be back soon. Tell everyone to behave while I'm out.' This alarmed her courtiers obviously but not half so much as what occurred next.

Through one of few gaps that her letters had been shoved…one was shoved back.

'_Dear Midna,_

_I apologize for my tardiness in replying, I've been preoccupied with matters in the Dark Realm (matters of which I'm sure you're aware) and it took me some time to find your letter. I hope you didn't send too many. I find I can't bring myself to write the crux of this letter for fear you might throw it down in your panic and scamper off to do something you'll regret. I know how fond you are of action, so I'll say this now:_

_Do not attempt to save him. This is a matter between shadows, true shadows, Midna. You cannot get involved._

_Wait for my next letter. _

_- Sheik'_

The letter ended there. No one was exactly sure who it was he meant, or (for that matter) if Midna had already done exactly what he'd advised against.

_-never-_

**Author's Note: **_Did they ban these yet? I've forgotten. Either way, I'm writing one. I just had to write something about TP or I'd go mad. This is just a prologue Real story begins next chapter. Feed back would be much appreciated. I haven't written a thing for ages. _


	2. Peculiar Circumstance

Peculiar Circumstance

_It's been noted that while fairies have great capacity for natural magic, more so than any mortal, they have very little capacity for reason. __Great Fairies in particular are barely sane by most human standards._

_- Field Studies of the Fey_

Due to some dreadful weather that season – and because the Hyrulian Royal Guard couldn't be roused from their beds to assist them – the merchants coming back down the mountain roads were having more than a spot of trouble with the local wildlife and couldn't make it the last leg of their journey to Castle Town. Sufficiently stranded on the opposite side of a mountain pass, it seemed like something of considerable concern as far as emergencies. And yet – for a while – no one took note, nor paid any mind, or bothered in general to inquire as to their absence during market. However, when the local shops began to run low on essentials and locals themselves low on certain luxuries (mountain mink scarves were highly fashionable of late) the Queen was called upon to dispatch someone to handle the problem.

The average Hyrulian soldier couldn't be bothered of course, the useful ones were all doing necessary things about the country, and most of the knights currently in court bore the title in name only and quite frankly would provide very little in the way of knightly help. Thus, they could not be dispensed at the leisure of their Queen to solve frivolous problems of the common folk which might, in turn, require them to dirty their hands. And that's to say nothing of actual combat. Besides the disposal of bandits and mongrels did not seem to be a quest of much merit anyhow, and wouldn't serve well to further their reputations among high society.

Eventually the Queen deemed it hopeless and enlisted some...volunteers.

"Ahem." One of the merchants cleared his throat yet again. "Ahurrrum! Ha! Hem-hem..."

For the past two hours up the mountain he'd been in the habit of doing that, though neither Ashei nor her quiet partner could discern precisely why. The young woman glanced over her shoulder for the umpteenth time, dark eyes flashing the warning to stop being so loud with all that coughing. At her side, one could detect the faintest tic (the corner of his mouth pulled from time to time, like he might bare fangs) in the bearing of her companion, the age of whom the incredulous businessmen had concluded to be even younger than the girl, who was young enough to be a daughter of theirs in the first place.

Suitably chastened, the merchant settled back driving the cart horses, but took the opportunity to voice yet another query to the unlikely pair of bodyguards.

"Pardon, me. I know I already asked, but I just wanted to be perfectly clear, to make sure we understand each other." He thought the corner of the girl's eye twitched minutely. "The Queen sent you? Just you two? No one else?" The young man coughed quietly, the sudden exclamation sounding suspiciously like some ambiguous word for 'bothersome'. Ashei didn't appear overly concerned with whatever messenge her friend disguised in his coughing, giving the merchant her full and alarmingly undivided attention.

After a moment - in which the girl's frightfully direct gaze cowed the loud coughing merchant back into his seat - Ashei began her reply, speaking ever so particularly, taking care to be utmost selective with her wording, lest something be lost in translation.

"If I remember correctly, mister, you already asked that question, yeah? And if I recall, I answered your question and asked you to please be quiet and not bring it up again, yeah? But if I remember further, you ignored me and instead asked my friend here the very same question and _he_ told you to be quiet. _He_ was very polite about it. More polite than me, yeah, but here you are, asking again. Despite his politeness. And since I'm not as polite as my polite friend can you guess what I'm going to tell you?"

The older merchant had already shrunk down to the farthest depths he could manage without toppling out of the moving cart.

Ashei had a vivid look about her. "Well?" she growled

"You'd like me to be quiet," the merchant concluded meekly.

She grinned menacingly and hissed with truly unnerving delight, "Yeaaaaaaaah."

And with that, she turned on her heel and marched around to the back of their small wagon train to be certain there weren't any ambitious bandits sneaking up on their rear. The other members of the troop looked equally perturbed by the sheer dominion this tiny girl commanded. She seemed a short and frail little thing without much in the way of girth, which was, in part, correct. Ashei had the body weight of a malnourished bird. However, her lack of dimensions couldn't disguise the truly frightening projection of a fearsome young warrior. Despite being a woman she carried herself as a man might, spoke as a man might, and commanded attention like a man's man might. That she could produce such masculine volume was appalling.

The young swordsman traveling with her, however, was the anti-thesis to the tall, loud, dark-eyed, dark-haired mountaineer: A little short for his age, blue-eyed, dirty-blond – of Hylian descent they supposed – and fresh-faced, he looked all of seventeen; though one could imagine him twenty if he tilted his head just so. When introduced, he refrained from speaking to anyone immediately, leading the merchants to conclude he was shy, or at the very least so thoroughly over-shadowed by his forward companion he simply hadn't had use for talking. It seemed plausible; Ashei said everything that needed saying after all. More to the point, none of them could claim to have heard him speak a single identifiable word.

While Ashei busied herself elsewhere, the merchant wives made a game out of it.

"Do you suppose he's mute? Or just very awkward?" fretted one of the older women, looking out from the cart. A lone figure scouted the trail up ahead, stepping briskly despite the cold and the frost this morning, looking particularly fine in the warm blue winter tunic the merchants had leant him. He'd shown up in little more than common traveling clothes and, being doting mothers all, the women of the troop had been obliged to dress him properly...that and they were so terribly bored the prospect of picking suitable clothing for someone came as a welcome distraction. Besides their quiet quilting during the day's travel, they'd little to entertain them.

"Awkward," replied one of the middle-aged wives around the pin bit between her teeth. "He's Ordonian. They haven't any social sensibilities at all, I'm afraid."

"Shame," sighed another wife, this one the youngest of the wedded women. "Though he's got a very pleasant air about him, doesn't he?"

At which point the only unwedded woman, having said very little thus far, looked up from stitching a patch in their quilt. "Yes," she agreed, "he does."

The three older women gave the younger woman a very concerning kind of stare and she blushed, promptly dropping her eyes back to her stitches and pretending she hadn't said any thing complimentary of any sort about any one. Propriety aside though, no one could deny the truth of those words. There was an undeniable air of..._something_ about the boy, thought precisely what that might be was lost on them.

Meanwhile, it had started to snow again and those not comfortably wrapped in blankets and woolen skirts and petticoats were left to contend with the harsher climbs of Snowpeak's ill-tempered foothills. Eventually the snow began to dump so heavily that Ashei called the train to a halt and ordered everyone to hunker down and set up camp. No sooner had she spoken than her companion appeared through the snow, leading his large irascible seeming mare by the reins and looking decidedly worn out with the weather, and possibly with this whole task altogether.

It was difficult to tell. He had his cloak wrapped protectively about his lower face and his hood up making him look positively eerie as he moved about the camp, unfastening cart horses from their respective carts and herding them together for the night.

Moving quickly, always with a latent purpose in mind, he went about his work with absolute silence that unnerved a number of the men. All too often they would be busy about something, minding their own business, when someone suddenly tapped on their shoulder. Then they'd spin about in a panic only to find that somehow the young Ordonian had come up unheard. Even the animals he worked with seemed to hush, as if doing him the favor of being quiet for his benefit. And even when there came a demand for some form of communication, still he managed to circumvent saying a thing. His habit of conveying his wishes through simple gestures in oppose to speaking was found undeniably odd, yet one never found themselves at a loss for what it was he meant.

One way or another he made it seem perfectly obvious.

That night Ashei found him through the blinding confetti fall of white, one boot braced against the side of a cart, tugging the knot of a horse's lead tight while the horse itself looked on, bemused at this behavior. While she could have spent hours trying to calm each horse enough to get it secure, it had taken the young ranch-hand all of fifteen minutes. Animals never did seem to give him any trouble for whatever reason. It was part of the basis she'd asked him to come up with her...that among other things. She tapped him and he turned about, unsurprised it seemed, and blinked expectantly for her to say something.

"Yeah. Link, your horse is being a pain," said Ashei by way of greeting.

Shocking blue eyes peered doubtfully out at her from the shadow of his hood, as if he - Link, formally 'of Ordon' - very much doubted that her statement sufficiently explained the story in its entirety. After a moment of petulant quiet the young woman heaved a sigh and went on.

"She won't let anyone tie her in with the other horses. Do something about it, yeah?"

Link pulled his collar down to his chin and – displaying for the world every drop of his heroic maturity – made a silly face.

Then he replaced the collar and strode away to tame his thrice-damned horse before it could justifiably mangle some poor, unfortunate merchant valiant enough to capture the finicky mare. Though the animal treated her master with the most graceful temperance imaginable in a mount, nickering and paying him attentions like a playful colt, she took an exceeding amount pleasure in treading upon the toes of strangers and head butting the unwary. Despite her upbringing as a mere cart-horse back in Ordon, Epona made it evident she was queen among equine animals and that there were very few people good enough to ride a creature such as herself and that you were presumptuous indeed if you thought you were - because you weren't.

Fool.

After a couple minutes of unsuccessful hunting, Link gave up searching the smokescreen of snow and instead put two fingers in his mouth and whistled a single, low, long and lingering note through the quiet dark. For a moment the teenager seemed forsaken – standing there, peering expectantly into the white-wash world – and then the steady canter of hooves crunching through newly fallen snow, a happy, eager rhythm, came faintly. Moments later the horse itself appeared, thundering out of the void into the perimeter of the wagons.

Link caught her reins and ran bare fingers down her dusty, velvet nose, grinning companionably at the animal. He muttered something softly to the horse and after a moment's consternation she trotted obediently away to join the other horses for the night.

Ashei got a fire going beside one of the wagons, using a canvas sheet as a make-shift roof to shield it from the snow while she built. Link wandered into the firelight after a while, the shape of his silhouette appearing from the dark, and sat down on a crate of fur-goods. His friend glanced briefly at him before staring hard back into the fire, rubbing her bare hands together near the crackling flames while she contemplated the odds of saying something clever enough to get a decent reply out of him. Having no particular skill for clever words, Ashei resorted to words she knew well instead, ones she'd fallen into the habit of saying whenever Link and she shared a fireside.

"There was a myth my mother used to tell me," she said candidly. "Before she died. It was a good one, yeah. I'll tell it to you now."

Given no particular option, Link settled back and got comfortable.

Ashei was a storyteller. This seemed to startle her companion who, like everyone else, had long since made presumptions about her based on her rough rearing and rougher regard for others. During the long watches, when she and Link sat up together, she would tell her stories until either one of them – Link preferably – nodded off into unconsciousness, or the dawn broke.

It seemed her cache of tales was infinite. Most of them she'd adapted from a variety of Shad's many – but excruciating – historical recountings and spun them up into a story worthy of mention. Other times she found it in her to speak the words of her late-mother and narrate to him the stories of her private and spiritual people. More often than not she told him bedtime stories her father told her.

It was a welcome kind of oddity; Link being the type of person with whom it was difficult to hold a real conversation, it was best to begin speaking with the expectation only one of them would be saying anything at all.

_-fey-_

"It is said, that the sister deities, the three goddesses, once walked the Realm for a time so that they might enjoy all that they had created. Farore, the guardian deity of wind and music, luck and bravery, took a path through the forests and there met a young Hylian swordsman. They talked for a time and in that brief conversation the deity found herself greatly enamored with the young mortal who was peerless true and courageous, and she found herself quite unable to separate herself from him without first offering him a bit of favor for having so fully captured her admiration. She kissed the boy once upon his off-hand, departed and thought nothing of it."

"At the very same time, Nayru, the guardian deity of water and literature, destiny and compassion, took her own path through the great cities of the Realm and wandering the halls of learning met a charming young princess. Together they discussed great works of art and much reading and history and magic and all imaginable things there are for sensible and knowledgeable young women to speak of. Nayru found herself very fond of her royal friend and quite unable to part from her without first offering some token of her undying appreciation for this young woman who had so duly impressed her. She kissed the girl once upon the forehead, departed and thought nothing of it.

"At the very same time, Din, the guardian deity of fire and war, capacity and ambition, took her own path through a blistering desert and there met a king thieves. She challenged him to a contest of arms and for a time they battled, fighting for nearly a full day's time until the man was at last cast down – for no mortal truly stood a chance against a goddess. Din, however, found that she could not readily part from his company without first offering him a boon for allowing her the pleasure of such a fine battle and gaining her undying respect. She kissed the man once upon the mouth, departed and thought nothing of it."

"They say in this way, the goddesses placed each a piece of themselves in the Realm of mortals. The king of thieves, having tasted power, found that nothing in this world could satisfy his thirst for something more and they say he was driven mad by his lust for it. The princess, having glimpsed into the infinite depth of true wisdom, found that she could no longer be satisfied to live in ignorance and grew to be so wise that the goddesses entrusted to her family a great and powerful treasure. The young swordsman, having been touched by true courage, found he was unable to ignore the darkness inherent in the world and he became one of the most feared heroes of the age."

_-fey-_

Ashei let the end hang thoughtfully in the quiet. For a moment she imagined she saw something skitter away at the edge of the firelight near Link's elbow, almost rising to her feet, but dismissing it as a trick of the shadows. Then, having completed her story she dropped her story-teller's voice – the caustic slang that usually mangled her diction, returning – and demanded rather loudly, "Good story, yeah?"

But Link had already dropped off to sleep. Demonstrating a fighter's indispensable ability to doze off absolutely anywhere, in a blinking, there was no telling how much of her story he'd actually heard. Ashei stared at him for a little bit, watching his shoulders rise and fall in a slow, even rhythm, listening to the sound of his breathing. It was peculiar circumstance that he was even here with her, she was a little surprised herself in all honesty, the enmity between him and the Hyrulian Royal Guard being so particularly vicious of late.

For a while, she thought he resented her accepting the offer of knighthood, but finding him at Lake Hylia – sprawled under the stars, staring out over the desert horizon – she realized he probably pitied her title. Again, she lacked the subtle language skills needed to ask him how he actually felt about any of it, so she dismissed the thought. Instead, she contemplated his reasons for curling up like that (like a dog or a little kid); if an older man had slept that way she might have kicked him awake on principle, but he was hardly twenty yet, so she let him dream.

But, gods, he must have some _kinks_ to work out in the morning.

_-fey-_

_**Author's Note: **Ahh, everyone is so kind. I forgot how nice reviews can be. Anyhow, there you have it. The first real chapter. A bit slow, but I'll have it pick up next chapter. I'm afraid I'm far too impatient to characterize properly. Be sure to berate me about it so I have to. _


	3. Impropriety

Impropriety

_The downfall of heroes is seldom their enemies, for they are well equipped to deal with them, but rather unexpected carelessness on the part of their friends and family. _

_- Philosophies of Muroda_

An unsettling kind of stillness had befallen the Palace of Twilight, a kind of muted and muffled worry engrained in the stone itself. Five days marked the longest stretch of time in nearly a year that the Twilit Court had gone without an order from their mischievous young royal. And not single one of their number could say they were not sorely bored for something to do.

It didn't occur to them to search for her, because all Twili are, in fact, impartial creatures by nature. And it had never been the habit of the Twili to pamper their royalty; that taught no duty.

It was also one of the sole reasons Midna held such sway in their culture, not merely by blood or power, but by temperament. The dull and limited constraints of ascension by rite alone impressed few in the Realm of Twilight. Pedigree or no, if you could not both serve your people and keep them mildly intrigued with you, it took very little to unseat said noble.

Midna, however, was a rare and intoxicating blend of capricious and capable. In her presence politics had no room to flourish, so absolutely did the commanding young Twili conduct herself (and so potent was her knowledge of their ancestors' Arts) that opposition simply had no leeway to get in around her. The sheer magnitude of her power choked out any of the usual insurgents and reluctantly they laid down for her. In her absence, however, they bred.

Suspiciously fast some would later remark.

The line of ascension being very strict about the rights to the throne, there arose some clamoring about who would have the proverbial dibs should Midna fail to return. If Midna had been vastly unpopular, it would have taken no stretch of imagination at all to find some loophole with which to deport her. But seeing that she had the fierce loyalty of more than a substantial majority of her subjects, any upstart would have to produce some impressive consideration indeed if they presumed to take her place.

And so the throne remained empty.

The close of the eighth day brought with it a peculiar shift in weather. Mottled purple thunderheads boiled across the skies, dimming the already darkened skies to desolate black and grays. Though no thunder ever struck in the world of Twilight (indeed, few of them could tell you what lightening was at all) it did rain, substantially, heavy sheets of icy crystal showers that rinsed the air of dusk's golden dust. In this darkness, the princess of the Twili returned.

"I'm home!"

The wickedly merry call sent a variety of her subjects spinning on their heels, gaping, shocked as the young heiress stepped in out of the rain. She swept the headdress from her forehead, letting the ornamental hood fall off the slope of her collarbone to her shoulders and grinning somewhat wolfishly she addressed the thunderstruck inhabitants.

"What's with those looks? Behaving like idiots, you should be ashamed. Your Princess returns from her arduous journey, chilled and wet and there's not a hot drink in sight? Tut-tut. What impropriety."

One of her more important courtiers scoffed loudly. "Oh yes, impropriety, Princess; this from the impudent child who flits off into the ether for so little reason and leaves her entire kingdom in disarray?" He hissed, a common show of irritation in the Court of Twilight, and gestured several underlings to get something or another. Hot drinks possibly, towels, a backlog of paperwork. "You fling off decorum as if you were some fourth daughter of no particularly important linage. You shame your entire bloodline. Ashamed? _Us_? Ha!"

Midna's smile turned impious.

"I see you haven't dulled your tongue a fraction, Howll."

He regarded her icily.

With hardly a care for those watching, she unclasped the sopping outer garment and the cloth slipped to the floor with a damp slapping sound, laying bare the glowing hieroglyphic traceries down the slender angles of Midna's arms to her wrists. They blazed blue through the thin black material that snaked up her arms to sternum. Wearing only that and the knotted sarong about her hips, the pale almost blue-white of her belly glowed against the dark cloth. She took up the hem of her hip wrap and twisted the fine black and silver embroidered cloth, wringing rainwater out in a stream.

"Dangerous games for the third son of a record-keeper. You're lucky I like you." Her tone was playful. She unlocked the beret binding the long ginger locks of her hair between her breasts and pulled the damp tresses behind her neck. "Ah, much better." The beret dissolved into black particles and melted to nothing. "As stylish as that is, it's rather uncomfortable. Tickles you know."

"I can't imagine," Howll said drolly. The male courtier, accustomed to Midna's casual indecency, didn't even flinch at the young woman's undressing.

The princess laughed, the sound a musical staccato, three notes of amusement ringing clear. "Eee, hee, hee. That's why you're no fun, Howll."

"Gods forbid I should bore you," he said sourly. "And where has our little runaway been holing up? Fretting atop a clandestine grave marker in some decrepit and depressing hole of the Dark? Mewling at the edge of the Light? Pining away –"

Midna waved an impatient hand, striding past the irritable Twili. "Practice your vocabulary some other time, Howll. I'm in somewhat of a hurry. Has Sheik answered my summons?"

If the brush off bothered the other Twili, he didn't show it. "Yes. He did that."

"And I presume you've taken the liberty of reading my mail?"

He snapped ebon fingers and with a 'zat!' the letter appeared between them. "No doubt not the answer you were looking for," he said, handing it to the waiting Princess. "Who is Sheik, if you don't mind my asking?"

"I mind."

"Would you be so kind as to tell me where you've been all these long days?"

"Moping and pining. The hole wasn't particularly decrepit, but it _was_ dark.""

"Ha and ha. What were you doing?" he reiterated.

Midna read as she walked, frowning very slightly before she tucked it in the waistband of her skirt. "I was looking into those 'matters in the Dark Realm'. Couldn't afford to be slowed up with an escort, so I took off myself. Knew you lot would hem and haw if I told you I was leaving all on my lonesome, so…"

Howll said nothing, because really he hadn't a civil thing left in him. The young Princess strode down the halls with a feline confidence, bare feet slapping the floors with loud, commanding snaps that echoed down the long halls in all directions. Howll could do little but trail her like an indolent puppy, glowering in hopes she would feel the glare and subsequently feel bad about it. A thin hope, he knew, but a hope.

"You know…" he said after a moment. "That's very bad form, Midna."

She smiled back at him, a dazzling, infatuated smile. "_Isn't_ it?" she asked, awed.

"Your suitors were fretting."

She made a disdainful sound. "They would. If I didn't come back how would they ever become King? Boring, weak little things, I'm afraid and with ambition disproportionate to their abilities."

Howll glowered. "You turned down some of the most powerful Twili in this Realm." She made a dubious sound, as if his silly words were subject to many interpretations. "Forgive this observation, but it seems to me you're valuing something few Twili men can offer."

"You mean strength? Novelty? Daring? Defiance? Pride? A will that won't bend unto any power, even my own? I don't see what so hard about that? I only ask for someone with a damn backbone and, if available, a face worth looking at for the span of my rule. I really don't know why that's so rare. _You're_ almost brazen enough –"

"The thought sends me reeling with disgust," Howll quipped instantly.

"You know," Midna's tone was wry, "it's a wonder I haven't had your tongue cut out by now. Anyway, you can see my dilemma, no?"

"Princess," he said almost tenuously, "you make it sound as if nothing less than a feral _beast_ will satisfy you."

Then she stopped walking suddenly. A strange thoughtfulness fell across her features as she considered this. After absorbing it a moment the soft shape of her lips curled back, baring a long triangle of glittering ivory teeth. In that reckless grin, he saw something like lust, something like insanity and something suspiciously like knowing. "Would that be so terrible?" she inquired crassly.

Howll glared. "Yes. And you'll not find a creature like that bred in the Twilit Court."

Her expression smoothed easily to casual disdain. "Pity. Is the Council meeting today?" she asked rapidly.

"Yes." Something occurred to him. "Where are we going, if you don't mind my asking?"

"Oh…" she said, waving her hand elegantly, "to take care of something. I've been meaning to get on with it for a while now, but whenever I got around to the task I'd think to myself 'Wow, I could be moping on a rock somewhere. Why don't I do that?' So I would. So I never got around to this thing that I'm consequently on my way to do now. Don't you love me being responsible?"

Then she burst into the Council Chamber with a horrendous bang as she smashed both of the monstrous double doors aside with nary flick of her wrists. The giant things rebounded from the walls with a series of deafening booms, people screamed, someone fell off their chair, several men lunged up as if to flee or fight. Taking it all in stride, the young woman squared herself in the entry, hands on hips, and addressing all those seated about the chamber she – in the very same tone one might inquire 'Gentlemen?" – announced:

"Traitors?"

A stone cold beat of silence.

Howll stared in horror at the princess. Midna – who adored shocking the nobility – seemed to be enjoying herself immensely, watching the effects of her words ripple through the room like a chord vibrating though water. Her eyes glittered wicked and bright, pale marigold almonds offset by russet auburn disks. Around the low obsidian table, the collection of nobility expressed a rainbow variety of shock and appall at this sudden accusation. The shock wore off quickly enough.

"So the errant princess returns," came one luxurious sneer.

Another took his cue. "What an honor to be recalled. We figured you'd simply…_run off_." Muffled laughter.

Then the young woman laughed: a long winding crescendo of disdainful music that threw her head back with its rhythm. Then, just as the spectacle edged on frightening, she bit it off. In the aftermath of her laughter, there was silence again. Howll shivered.

"Oh, yes," she said, amused. "Turn this back on me. But as awful as my offenses are – and remind me again why leaving for a week is so reprehensible – yours are _far_ worse. There is no forgiveness for stupidity and that's exactly your crime, my friends. Pity on you. Shame, shame, shame. Did you think you could do such a thing and not reap the consequence?" Howll heard the cold beneath her merriment, that poisonous and deadly tone. Her fingers set astride her hips dug grooves into her skin, nails biting crescents along her navel.

"Did you think you could blight something I cherish without my notice?"

And there, apparently, it was.

One of the Twili stood, throwing their finger at the girl with a crowing laugh. "So there it is! She says it plainly now," he leered, casting his gaze imploringly about the room. "Cherish? _Cherish_? What words are these for a Princess to utter? What treachery –?"

Midna's right hand tore from her hip. The whole room recoiled, but the ruling enchantress merely lifted a single finger in warning. "Do not speak of treachery," she whispered.

Howll swallowed reflexively. All was still and soundless for a moment, every corner of the room resonating with those words, echoing deep and chill with the threat.

"We will speak of what needs to be spoken of," said one woman sharply, throwing words into the quiet and tossing her chin high. "You shirk your duties, Princess. You mock all that had been bequeathed to you by the doctrines of our people for so little it is next to nothing. No. Not next to nothing. Nothing. A worthless impractical thing so faded it is but a worn and useless _memory_. That is what you sacrifice your people for."

Midna seemed amused. "Oh? I've been sacrificing things have I? Tell me, please, what have I given up?"

"Title," snapped one of the men in the far back. "You would deny yourself the position of Queen on a whim –"

She flung up a hand, stopping those words. "Oh please. That cannot possibly be your reason." Her iridescent gaze burned like hell fire, chilled like hoarfrost. "Try again. I'm feeling generous.

"Is that reason not enough?" said one of the younger men standing nearer to her, his flaming orange hair hacked short, swept back in curling spines. Familiar glowing green etchings wound down his bare chest to his belly and branched across his torso like a star-struck galaxy. His voice echoed low and melodious. "That our ruler seems ill-inclined to lead her own people, even with the full favor of her kingdom at her back? Is that not worrisome enough to stir our interference? You're distracted, Princess. We merely mean to focus you."

Midna's eyes fell to him. "Lyre," she named her former suitor quietly. "I liked you well enough. Why are you doing this?"

His mouth pulled in a rye smile, a twisted mimicry of amusement, perverse and pained. "Liked me well enough? Ha. Do not cater to my ego or my wounded heart, princess. You'll find it doesn't bleed for you any longer. I could accept that you find me inadequate, that you find me repulsive, that you could not bear my company." A bitter pause. "But no more. I know the truth. I know what it is that corrupts your heart."

She rolled her eyes magnificently. "Ugh. Such dramatics," she groaned, making an eloquent face. "You make me sound like some ancient spinster. I'm offended. Let's try again. This time, why don't you tell me why you doddering fools thought it wise to unleash One Unnamed?"

Howll made a muffled gasping sound.

No one paid him any heed. Midna went on; face a stunning mixed mask of malicious delight and righteous fury.

"Better, tell me how _you_ – with your second-rate enchantments – managed to persuade something so vile and corrupt to move as a pawn for you. What did you promise him? What could you weak idiots have possibly offered _him_ to bring that wonton thing under your banner? Not even the First Born of the Royal Family succeeded in taming that darkling monster, so how could you?"

Lyre seemed more than happy to reply, the fine bones features of his dark face twisted in repulsive pleasure. "We shared a common goal."

"_What_ goal?" Her eyes blazed.

"Why can't you guess?"

"I _disdain_ guessing games. You would know that if you were even half worthy of my attention."

"We've killed your pet, princess. You'll have to train another."

And that, simply, was too far.

Howll looked away quickly enough that he didn't see what, exactly, Midna did to him. Several of the Council members screamed, one of them might have been Lyre. Through his peripheral he glimpsed a blaze of mottled neon light, like a pulsating mass of liquid gold and sun-set suddenly surging out over Midna's delicate shoulders. Coils of acid colored power wrapped her form like a cloak, more beautiful and blinding than any other. Then the nimbus of magic vanished and like-wise, Lyre no longer stood among those still living. Only his chair, toppled and empty gave allusion to his fate.

For an instant, no one knew what she might do.

Then Midna turned away from the silent number of her courtiers. "You fools," she said plainly. "You simply don't know what you've done."

And she strode away into the halls of the palace, presumably to get something hot to drink.

_-heroes-_

_Author's Note: Ugh! This is not faster! What's wrong with me? Usually I can't go two chapters without someone bashing someone else's head in. Oh well, hope you enjoyed Midna. The next chapter is written, just need tweaking. _


	4. Displacement

Displacement

_"Shadows are notorious for being of precocious and unpredictable nature and behavior...most noticeably around mirrors." _

_- Essays of the Twili_

Link woke up under the strangest impression that some inconsiderate person – namely a rather heavy one – was kneeling on his chest. Having grown accustomed to sleeping with odd weight lolling selfishly around on him, he only woke because this particular weight had fallen over his face and made it difficult to breathe. For moment he merely found this irksome and warranted the inconsiderate individual a faint growl of displeasure as a signal for them to henceforth knock it off lest he shove them – most viciously – off him.

It was about then that he realized that even dog-sized denizens of Twilight don't suffocate their partners, however uncomfortable a mattress they find them to be, and furthermore he hadn't dealt with that particular sleeping arrangement for nearly a year now…

If his mouth hadn't been covered, he might have sworn…creatively.

But as it was, his attacker had already settled comfortably on his chest, straddling him, their knees pinning both his arms hard to the permafrost, arresting his movement. They had their hands clamped over his mouth nose and mouth, smothering him – a peculiar choice when throttling someone is so much more effective, but successful nonetheless. He couldn't breathe.

Panic bubbled up in his chest like a cold chemical, washing through his veins and stripping away any lingering dregs of sleep with a rude slap. Unable to work his arms free, Link thrashed and bucked _hard_ in an attempt to dislodge the murderous intruder, a sick, hot sensation blooming through his body, his anatomy demanding air. He kneed his attacker uselessly in the back, wrenching and jerking without success.

All the while it ran through his mind like a cycling rhythm, urgent and desperate: _Where is she? Where is she? Where is she?_

He almost forgot he meant Ashei.

Someone laughed quietly, maliciously in the dark, a low, unhurried chuckle. _Heh, heh, heh_. Somewhere through the pain, through the terror, through the scrabbling, desperation, Link found it in him to wonder hideously if this interloper hadn't already killed her. In the gloom the details of his attacker blurred to shadows, a pair of wicked red eyes glowing obstinate scarlet from a featureless black face. The hands covering his mouth were cool and familiar in temperature – had he known hands this cold before? – the smell of well worn leather and dust forced on him was one he knew.

Blood roared in his ears, thundering in deafening allegro measures through his skull, a manic metronome reminding him had he _needed to breathe!_ Anything to just_ breathe! _His world was spinning down fast into agonizing grays and black, spangled bursts of hallucinogenic light. Dark corners were closing in from every angle; explosions riddled his chest for every oxygen starved beat of his heart, struggling to keep him alive, to keep him conscious even as the reality of suffocation was driving him mad. Though his attacker was his height, weight, and build precisely, for some reason he couldn't work himself free for even an instant.

_I can't fight him._ The realization brought with it an absurd fascination._ I thought…_ But he didn't know.

And through it all something inside him retched for the _despair_ of that realization, that ridiculous instant where he'd thought everything was going to be okay, because he'd taken comfort thinking – just for that breath – he wasn't alone. All at once his attacker hunched over and whispered to him, breath cold rather than warm. "I know you can do better than that." The words invaded the inner curve of his ear, harsh and wicked. "You're not even trying."

_She's not here._ Everything was fading out. _She's __**not**__ here. _His heartbeat crashing through his veins, through his ears, was slowing. _Save yourself!_

His world – like so many times before – blazed lukewarm and cherry-red, a miscellany of pain and something almost ecstasy, tearing apart, melting, rending through everything he was or would be, arching his spine, begging a scream – and suddenly he had his fangs in his attacker's throat, hot wetness running in thick runnels between razor sharp teeth. How he'd changed, how he'd remembered the sensation after so long (so damn long) without, he couldn't say.

All he could think was the taste of the acrid moldering slick flooding the inside of his mouth and that all the blood he'd ever tasted had never before has such a bitter tang as this. Then the fallen man chuckled, the vibration of his laughter shivering through Link's teeth into his skull and ringing there, the sound echoing into the very marrow of his bones, a low and husky tone.

"I knew you had it in you, Hero," said the dark being viciously. "Like that taste?"

"_Link_!"

His eyes snapped open in the real world and a cacophony of bestial screams crashed his senses. Merchants were yelling and men running profanities, women screeching and herding away from the danger in no particularly effective fashion as they seemed uncertain where the danger actually was. Ashei was standing over him, sword in hand, cross bow in the other, looking messy and angry. "Link! You better wake up, yeah! Something's attacking the horses, I can't get 'em to calm down!"

Link was up and running before she got past 'horses'.

Outside the ring of carts, the firelight could do little to relieve the dark, transforming the mixture of animals into a collage of black blurs, sprinting and bolting through the snow and dark around him. Tearing his gloves off, he jammed two fingers in his mouth and loosed a harsh whistle. A horse reared up from the throng, wheeling around to face him before shoving her way through the multitude. Epona raced past him, slowing just enough to allow the young ranch-hand to catch her mane. He swung up onto her back.

Even before he saw them he thought he smelled them, though – logically – that made very little sense. Dreams or no, he wasn't one of them anymore.

Wolves.

Through the chaos of the panicking horses Link picked out the sleek flash of lupine bodies, flitting through the dark, eyes flashing animalistic green in the moonlight. The smell of predators had driven the horses mad with fear and try as he might, no amount of human persuasion could convince them it was good idea to calm down. The horses – in their panic – congregated around him and Epona, rearing and screaming and slamming both horse and rider into the middle of the mess, constricting their movement.

As he was jostled again, flinching as his leg was bashed against flank of another horse in the stirrup, he reflected that perhaps dashing into the stampeding crowd of horses wasn't – in perfect honesty – a very good idea. Something moved through his peripheral. Swift animalistic speed, predators sweeping across the icy dirt, merciless and inhuman intent that he felt he understood exactly. Somewhere in the upper regions of his mind someone was groaning:

_Urg…what are you doing, you idiot!?_

One of them was barking to the others and suddenly four of them broke away from the pack, raced from the herd and vanished into the snow. Link pulled Epona about quickly, an icy knot coiling up in his middle as a clear voice – one sounding suspiciously of echoes and music – hissed in the back of his head: _They're heading back for the campsite! Hurry it up!_

He didn't have time to heed his muse, however, because at that moment a great mottled brown she-wolf lunged up at Epona's haunches, slavering and snapping fangs shut inches from her rider's arm. The other horses scattered. Epona veered, whinnying and ran…

…straight into the other four wolves.

In the back of his attention a sheepish voice said, _Whoops._

Link swore and hauled up on the reins, but too late. Epona was already rearing up in a panic, hooves flailing, eyes rolling in their sockets; a look Link recognized as blind terror. One of the wolves lunged up from the right and Epona – no longer heeding Link's desperate directions – failed to move in time. The wolf snapped jaws around Link's arm and tore him from the saddle, hurling him in a wild blur of gravity to the ground. His head slammed into the icy earth, setting off a deluge of white starbursts in his brain and for a sick instant he _nearly_ plunged into unconscio–

Link came to, dizzily aware of an excruciating pain in the back of his head and that the wolf hadn't relinquished her hold on his arm. She had his bracer between her jaws and seemed intent on dragging him out of the field into the wood. Snarling and thrashing her head viciously back and forth, she snapped her jaws more deeply into the hard leather of his bracer; this time her fangs found purchase in the muscle of his forearm.

Fangs plunged like red-hot pins into the underside of his arm, triggering something. Familiar heat seized up in his guts, burning a hot path through his bones to his brain, curling his lips back in a snarl not liken to any human expression. The world morphed and distorted as the heat melted away fettered mortal senses into a dazzling, maddening world of scent and sensation and – _Gods, it tastes like wind doesn't it? Like freedom! – _Link abandoned caution and grabbed the wolf by the ruff.

Fierce amber eyes locked with a pair of mortal blue…and found them equally feral.

Those serrated ivory jaws relaxed instantly. The cavernous growls died away into a plaintive whine and the wolf let go of his arm, allowing him to pull the aching limb against his chest. Hot blood dripped down his fingers, staining the snow in dark droplets. The beast whimpered, nosing a furry snout into the crook of his arm until he allowed her to run a warm tongue worriedly across the hurt. For a moment she circled him like an anxious dog, licking and pawing at the peculiar human-shaped wolf.

He got down on his knees and with his good hand took her behind the ears and butting his head gently against hers, whispered softly. The heat inside him seemed to dim, to disperse throughout his blood once again, the wild burning thing inside him dissolving back into himself. After a moment, Link sat back, the air shivering with the last of whatever it was the made his blood run hot like theirs. Secretly he grieved it.

A pair of reflective bestial eyes peered ponderously up at him and he got to his feet. He gave the wolf and hard look, jerking his head toward the woods. Her tail wagged. Then she barked and shot away into the dark, the rest of the pack streaking after her. Somewhere in the back of everything a sickened part of him remarked that wasn't the most customary means to resolve a wolf problem. However, that other voice in his head was snickering, gleeful and wicked and drowned it out with melodious giggles.

_Hee, hee, hee! Not so tame after all! _

And that was comforting.

"Link!" There was a thunder of hooves and out of the snow galloped Ashei astride her loyal little war-horse, fearless despite the scent of wolves. Ashei herself looked similarly unperturbed and reined up beside him, glaring in a manner that suggested her extreme displeasure. "You're a damn idiot," she informed him tartly.

He grinned recklessly up at her.

"How in the world did you scare off those wolves?" she demanded, peering into the empty snow. "They've been terrorizing the mountains for ages. Most fearsome mongrels ever bred up these woods. Luck of the Lady Farore they didn't rip you apart, yeah."

Link looked innocently off in another direction.

"C'mon you. You'll have a hero's welcome, yeah. Damn showoff."

And together they walked back toward camp, neither of them noticing – because honestly, who pays attention to something like that? – that Link's shadow didn't immediately follow.

_-shadow-_

"Highness?"

Zelda spared only the most cursory of looks, eyes trailing only briefly toward the feet of the young page at the door. She acknowledged him with a faint affirmative noise that was probably unregal of her, but found herself pleasantly unconcerned with it being so. The boy shuffled uncertainly, but she refrained from looking up, far too absorbed in her working to curry favor with a messenger. Usually she gave more intimate attention to those under her, but these days she found she had very little patience for anyone, much less nervous boys in livery.

"Highness, there is a…a letter from Ordon."

Her head came up immediately. "Show it to me. Is it still in the castle mail room? Do you have it?"

She was overjoyed to see him fumbling with a pocket in his satchel. Suddenly she had far more patience than she'd possessed two breathes ago, which was a fortunate thing because the page was having trouble with the clasps and drawstrings. After a moment's struggle he pulled a browning envelope from the pouch and – looking relieved – crossed the room to hand it to her. With a wave she dismissed him and returned to the light of her reading desk. The neat printing across the back was not the incomprehensible chicken scratch she had hoped for, but after so little fruit previously, she could hardly complain.

Forsaking the waste of finding a letter opener, she ripped it open with her thumb and tugged a sheaf of thick home-made parchment from the package. She could see where the writer had pounded it flat with something – probably a book – to make it fold properly and fit inside the envelope. Carefully she unfolded it. Her eyes jumped down the page and found the phrases '– Ordona Province –' and '– practically missing –' ended with 'Signed, Ilia'. Then she returned to the top of the page and started to read.

'_Dear Queen Zelda, _

_I know that you do not know me and that you're probably caught up in all kinds of other, far more important things, but I've grown a bit desperate. At first I thought this was another one of his journeys for the crown, but since the arrival of your messengers I've found that isn't true. Not true at all. They told me that Link is no longer working at the request of your Ladyship. They told me that he's practically missing. They told me that you can't find him.'_

(Here, Zelda cursed her men softly for not being cunning enough to say nothing to a village girl.)

'_I meant not to write you. I know Link would rather that I not get involved with what he does for the crown, but I hope that by helping you I will somehow help bring my closest friend home. Only a few days prior to the arrival of your first messenger, there was young woman in Ordona Province asking for Link. I recognized her from Telma's bar when I spent some time in Castle Town and asked her what she wanted. _

_She said her name was Ashei and that Link was needed for the service of Hyrule. He'd already gone to Lake Hylia the week prior, so I directed her there. Link might still be with this Ashei girl. Please. If you find him, send me a message, tell me he's alright. I don't ask that you send him back, but I would ask, as a friend of a friend – you do consider him a friend, don't you? – that you find him. I'm afraid that something is wrong. _

_He's not the person I used to know._

_Signed, Ilia.'_

Zelda laid the letter down gently.

For a moment her thoughts lingered oddly upon the signature trailing the end of the letter, the handy work of some simple, blessed girl from some nowhere town outside Hyrule who called a hero her closest friend, woke with the thought of seeing him casually, of scolding him, who had the right to make fun of him at her leisure, and know – without being told – something was wrong... Then she dismissed the thought before it could progress and turned to more important matters.

Ashei. Ashei. The name reiterated angrily, accusingly. A small inconceivable little part of her smoldered as the rest of her mind drew the needed conclusions from the information offered.

While it wasn't usually in her to grow upset by some dissention in the ranks – the armies of Hyrule had never consisted of the most reliable lot – it stung more than a little thinking that not only had one of her favored knights, the first female knight in over a century (at her discretion, she might add) not informed her of Link's whereabouts, but subsequently spirited the other swordsman away to some remote crack in the mountains.

Painfully, a part of her consented that perhaps she had little right to be so possessive (though it rankled somewhat to be conspired against by two she considered friends) but it enthused more than a bit of ire that the other woman thought it prudent to hide the Ordonian from her. As if she meant him harm. It was absurd.

She regretted many things, one of which was the turn that the relationship between her and the Hero of Twilight had taken of late, but she had never crossed such an inconceivable line. Proud and fierce and infuriating as Link was – smiling, polite while he effectively _butchered_ propriety for the sake of so little it was next to _nothing_ – still, she'd managed not to make that mistake.

She'd never hurt him.

Turning away from the table she crossed the room to one of the small ornate silver mirrors hung about the library. Stopping briefly to remove the silken glove from her right hand, she touched the lids of both eyes then, extending her hand before the mirror waited until a soft, steady gold shone from the pyramid of the Triforce symbol etched into her skin. Her reflection seemed to ripple, then pulse, then shimmer until it faded and melted away into a smoky whorl behind the surface of the glass. Eyes narrowing slightly, she ran her fingers in a smooth half circle along the upper half of frame.

"By the North, show me my desire."

The fog bled away into a spanning bird's eye view of the Lanayru Province. She ran her finger along the upper north west quarter of the mirror.

"By the North and West quarter, show me my desire."

The land melted away into a rugged, snow capped mountain range. With her thumb she divided the mountains with line through the centre. Then quartered it, then halved the quarters and so forth, each image shrinking in accordance with her eliminations until only a rugged valley of forest remain, nestled between two foothills at the base of Snowpeak. She recognized the basin as one intimate to Ashei; she would have taken a road through here. Zelda pursed her lips then brushed the treetops with ginger fingers.

"By the Earth and Air, show me my desire."

The image shot forward from the bird's eye view, plunging recklessly through green canopy and underbrush until it wrenched to a halt below the trees. In the mirror, snow drifted down on a beaten path; running like an uneven ribbon of dirt through the otherwise untouched nature of the forest. The road itself was empty. She frowned, uncertain where to proceed from there. It was an ancient and archaic means she used to find the missing swordsman, one that took some intimacy with the subject being traced and more that some skill on the part of the tracker.

It was complicated, but it boiled down to asking the North, South, East, and West if they remembered someone like Link passing their direction. Then, determining a location, one narrowed down the directions until one could trace precisely the path that their subject might have taken. It took ties with old, old magic in the Realm to ask the land what she was currently inquiring of it, but the Royal Family had made such ties long ago and they remained strong in her. The problem with this magic laid in the fact almost all of Hyrule had memory of Link and was irritatingly eager to share it with her. There was no telling how long ago he'd taken this route and no way of asking.

She regarded the snow frosted trees critically. "Where are you?" she asked, addressing the trees, but not in fact meaning them. "Who can I ask?"

She'd already asked the Directions to remember his passing, the Wind to recall his voice, the Earth to recollect his footsteps. What more could she ask? After a moment she determined…there was no one left to ask. She'd have to be less friendly if she wanted to pin-point the errant hero.

Absently she took the mirror down from the wall and walked back to the desk, taking a seat and setting the tiny looking glass down on a stack of books. Flipping through one of the more alarming looking tomes, Zelda ran her finger down the long line of ancient script, translating, muttering, sighing to herself. She would have paced with it while she worked, but she didn't think she had the strength. (There was an ongoing rumor that a servant had tried to take the book down without her instruction and the ancient thing had crushed the unfortunate scullion. This was ridiculous of course; it had only fractured a few ribs.)

It was getting late.

More sensible members of nobility were abed and usually she was with them, but she couldn't spare the hours tonight. It was the search that drove her, tireless, beyond sleep to stay awake, hunting through dusty ancient records long since fallen out of memory or care. She'd ordered the bulk of the royal library brought to her private study and it had only amassed since then. It was, after all, the only thing she could do, had ever been able to do for anyone, Link or her kingdom: study, know, counsel, and then (only then) act.

She picked up the mirror again, this time placing it flat before her and – after digging under some scrolls – found the pen knife she used to cut the nubs from her quills. Reading through the proper incantation she pricked her finger and held it aloft over the mirror's face. Quietly she repeated the lines, softly, evenly, tonelessly, looping through them as the deep burgundy drop gathered at her finger tip…then dripped onto the silver. It hissed on contact and the glass began to bubble and surge like boiled lead.

She lifted her other hand to her mouth and in a whisper said the name of her chosen subject. Syllables puffing through her lips like steam and tangling there between her fingers. The name stuck to her skin like rubbed cotton, hanging on her by means of invisible static, crackling with the power inherent in the letters. Gingerly, she unwrapped the name from her hand and dropped it like a piece of cobweb into the mirror, watching it sink into the liquid material, glowing faintly white before vanishing beneath.

The surface smoothed instantly and a figure materialized within the dim light of the looking glass. She leaned over and peered intently into the glass, expecting to see Link at whatever task he was doing, anticipating the first glimpse of the young man (probably sleeping if he was sensible). But the mirror remained clouded, dark blurs – like black veils, or smoke – racing beneath the polished surface, obscuring her view.

She sat up, a shiver of unease running through her.

"Clouded?" she murmured, blue eyes searching the looking glass anxiously. She extended he hand again, a soft nimbus of light gathering about her fingers, reaching out as if to pierce the veil…

_(…and somewhere, caught like a moth between the Dark and Light, stranded outside the Twilight, something stirred. It brushed his sixth sense: like a cat sensing movement beyond the scope of their usual perception. Then, casting into the void, he extended something like a hand and finding the interloper smiled a vicious smile and uncurled from the inky nothing. With a vicious swipe, he struck out almost blindly and…)_

_Crack_!

There was a splintering sound and a slice of pain slit through her fingers. Zelda recoiled with a cry and a splatter of darkest red sprayed across the tabletop, sprinkling scrolls and dotting documents. Her hand throbbing, she unfurled it to paint-like crimson stain, each digit bleeding from an identical slice across the middle joint. The mirror had fractured. For an instant, behind the glittering pieces, she thought she saw something stare malevolently out at her…then vanish into the ether.

"What's the matter, Princess?" Zelda felt someone on her left, caught a flash of iridescent claret eyes. A stranger was seated against the window sill, gazing idly out through the faceted glass. He was masked, dressed loosely in dark desert clothing. He struck her undeniably foreign, absurdly fey there, framed by pale lunar light. He turned those strange irradiated eyes back on her, pale brows arching, amused. The words and tone were mocking. "Misplaced your, Hero have you?"

_-archetype-_

_**Author's Note: **__So many kind people! I'm shocked and pleased you approve. Quick Apology: I constantly edit and edit and edit my errors for lack of a beta reader so it seems as if I am reposting the same chapter again and again…which I am. Sorry 'bout that. I'm a dork when it comes to little grammatical mishaps. Hope you enjoyed it anyway._


	5. Selfish

Selfish

_There are many different kinds of magic in the world. Wizardry, being the most widely known, is governed by Nayru and exercised on a regular basis by the Royal Family. The other kinds of magic are subject to much controversy and their users – when they are discovered at all – have a peculiar habit of dying suddenly and usually with a great deal of pain._

- _Hyrulian Arts and Archetypes_

The storm hit mid-day. Hoary gray bundles of bruised and blackened clouds rolling in across the grayling skies so fast even Ashei – upon looking up – was taken off guard. Not that she'd ever let on. She set her little mare racing up and down the line, yelling and snarling for men to ring the wagons, _'Now, dammit_!' No sooner had she given the command to stop and tie down hard than the snow began to fall. Thick white flakes began to sift down through the crags and cliffs, sliding between tree branches to sprinkle the ground in deceptively harmless prettiness.

Ashei looked upon it in horror.

The young woman grabbed the nearest batch of unfortunate men and began roaring that they either move to lash the wagons together or suffer a _very_ uncomfortable night outside. Through the corner of her eye always she caught the familiar azure blur of liquid motion, Link rushing between fumbling forty-year olds, fast and effective, loping along in the snow. After much running about, much swearing and more than a little bit of Ashei smacking men about the ears, they got the huge make-shift tent set up and everyone settling in underneath it, huddled about crackling orange fire pits, draped in blankets and heavy coats.

Then the winds hit. Blistering gusts of cold so biting, the men unloaded the fur pelts from the back of the wagons and started hanging them across the gaps between the wagons to shield the women and children. Ashei ordered a head count every half hour and a buddy system for good measure. The tally came back one short, but the missing head she'd already accounted for. Besides…

She had better things to worry about than a scruffy looking ranch-hand who may or may not listen to her advice about freak snowstorms.

Link joined them last, walking in out of the whirling white and dropping himself on the ground next to a fire. He sprawled there like a cat, soaking in the heat and for a moment unfurled in a manner so like a mangy tom that several people stared openly at the adolescent. He didn't notice. Ashei glowered as he proceeded to take up far more room than necessary, his boot nudging her hip, encouraging her to scoot so he could take up even more. She whacked his foot with her fist instead and he curled his legs obligingly, turning his face into the warmth of the crackling new flames.

He looked, for an instant, every inch a lazy teenager.

But then he didn't.

In all honesty, it didn't matter how much space he took up. None of the merchants, she knew (and suspected Link knew, as he was slinging his sword and shield and other accoutrements all about the fireside) would join them. She wondered if he minded that at all. Or if he ever had and if so, when he'd stopped caring? But she never, as usual, had the words to find out.

"The horses are all tied in together for the night?" she asked gruffly.

He yawned loudly and nodded.

"Don't fall asleep yet. It's not hot enough in here, hear me?"

He rolled fierce bright eyes with exhaustive production, as if her bothersome nags were all but the bane of his life and he couldn't quite believe she might so thoroughly discredit him with her insipid details. Then he made another silly face at her. Had he been any other man, the young woman would have most certainly laid into him with a very – and again _very_ – well aimed boot. But because he was Link and because she was tired and because she was just getting warm, she let him off the hook and studied the younger fighter intently.

Balanced on one elbow he fit his chin into the palm of his hand and grinned at the lady knight with a kind of idle charm you never perceived unless the teenager – yes, he wasn't quite twenty. Still a teenager – was either completely at ease or literally half-asleep. Though, seeing it (the charm) was easier when he was out of uniform. He hadn't worn that familiar green tunic – the one she'd learned to know and respect him in – for ages and he insisted upon questioning that he simply didn't recall which chest he'd packed it in at home. Or that it was, in fact, rather out of date.

…which was a lie, and a lazy one at that.

Link wore the same style of tunic by habit now; even the blue winter shirt he wore currently shared the identical simple cut. She didn't blame him for leaving the hat. Unless one was in the habit of gallivanting about the land in search of evils to battle and heroic things to do, the hat was a little silly. She supposed he'd stopped wearing it in an attempt to divert the attentions of the curious, the crowds and the cankerous military types. The green tunic had become somewhat legendary. He'd stopped doing legendary a while ago.

She broke the silence at random. "Link, remind me again how many duels you've been challenged to, yeah?"

He held up three fingers. His eyes were closed.

"Three?" She sounded skeptical. "I remembered five or six. Does Zelda know about –?"

Those blue orbs bounced open and he shot her a cranky kind of a glare, one that spoke of being cold, achy, out of your accustomed climate and pestered. She respected that just enough to raise her hands in submission.

"Alright. I know, just thought I should try, yeah?" He glared until he was satisfied she was done and those hot eyes drifted shut again.

After a moment she continued.

"Since I took knighthood, I've gotten four gloves to the face and I figured you'd gotten your share too. Crotchety blue-blood brats hate to think the sacredness of the nobility is being _soiled_ by our lowly presence." Link made a discernable snorting sound. "You know not one of them lasted two minutes against me. I hate to think what _you_ did to them, yeah?"

He smiled a little smugly and tucked his arm under his head.

Ashei kicked him. "Wake up. You can't drop off yet, it's too cold."

Those blue eyes blinked open, swimming in ire. He grumbled and sat up against a pile of lumpy canvas bags, arms over his abdomen and gave her an indolent look. She pondered what story she should tell tonight, maybe the one of Farore and the creation of the Kokiri, spites and children of the forest, or Din and how she scorched the earth to desert… Then a strange shiver prickled down her spine and she become sharply aware of a low, lazy note humming in the hollow of her ears.

She glanced at Link. He was toying with the edge of a lacquered horseshoe reed about his throat, humming to himself. Somewhat shocking from a youth who seldom worked past single syllable sentences; 'Hmm,' and 'Shh!' being the most prominent. She stared.

The odd thing about this out-of-place singing wasn't the novelty itself (he did this pretty often) so much as the unsettling sensation that the notes were somehow lingering in the air and vibrating into one's very bones. Not to say the affect was…unpleasant per say, but rather too unnatural a feeling to be judged pleasant or unpleasant, either way. It was a little habit of his that seldom went unnoticed. Around the camp an observant few (read: the women) detected that depending upon the song – there were six recognizable tunes he knew – the degree of discomfort varied.

Link, for his part, appeared altogether unaware that he was doing anything unusual at all.

Unfortunately, the same could not be said for the superstitious and high-strung merchants, who were not particularly fond of a handsome stranger having questionable affects upon them or – more importantly – their wives. The women _were_ the ones to bring it up after all and this was part of the reason Link and Ashei sat alone, the merchants being the avoidant type in oppose to confrontational. Nevertheless, Ashei had made a note to keep an eye on the Ordonian for the duration of the trip.

As a result, the young woman became increasingly aware of something…odd about him.

It wasn't something tangible so much as the feeling one got when standing next to him, like there was something stagnating in the air, a gravity of which he was the epicenter. Sometimes she could almost see it weighing him down, a drained exhaustion in his face, the way he hissed softly to himself when he sat up in the morning, sucking breath fast and hurt through his teeth.

She'd catch him with a strange and feral gleam in his gaze, a sharp instinctive flash through inhuman blue eyes before vanishing into that unassuming smile. He sometimes murmured in his sleep, caught up in some hectic dream until he'd thrash awake and dig his fingers into the shadows like he could pull the darkness off the earth. On occasion she caught him unawares, expression blank with pain, face ashen like he might be sick. She thought she heard him murmuring something to himself; some soft anachronism beyond her knowing, some comfort word.

A word like 'midnight'.

"You can go to sleep if you want." said Ashei finally. "I can take first watch."

-archetype-

Howll was wrong. Midna didn't get herself anything warm to drink after all. He followed her at a half-sprint through the ancient halls of their hallowed home, refraining from the full sprint lest he actually catch up with her before she'd properly cooled her temper. At the moment, the farthest thing from her spinning mind was the delicate blend of spices she might prefer to sooth her palate. Rather, her thoughts had been quite caught up in matters of an entirely different nature.

The last humming dregs of power still shivering through her, buzzed uncomfortably through the ligaments of her arms and legs, throbbing in her stomach. She shook out her arms and rolled her neck for good measure.

"It's appalling, Howll," she called over her shoulder, refusing to turn to her subordinate. "The things my own people do to each other."

He didn't say anything, for which she was grateful. There was no telling what she might do at this new and dangerous point she'd reached, now that she'd been shoved beyond her limited patience. Midna threw open the doors into the Record Chamber, the ancient halls echoing mournfully with the twin thud of doors. A variety of bright-eyed young librarians looked up from their filing, startled and bedazzled at the sight of their Princess suddenly, violently among them. Several dropped their books and didn't bother to pick them up, perfectly content to gape.

Delicately tapered brows jumped together in her forehead, furrowing with displeasure. "My, but aren't there a lot of little _mice_ in here," she said, baring her teeth in a truly frightening manner.

A storm of books pounded to the floors, robes rushing like whispers and there, quite simply, were no librarians left.

She pushed away from the doors and set off down one of the long isles, the wall of books on either side of her like the walls of a great black labyrinth. Her voice carried a harsh lilt of laughter to it, one that didn't fit the sharp and noxious flavor that clung like lichens in her throat, coating her words with false merriment. She couldn't help the words. They came like vomit when she was angry, anxious, _hurt_.

"You'd think after this long the Council would get in their heads that revolt only works if the people agree to it. Kings of our past forgot it, Queens and Warlords and Wizards all: In the end, the people hold all the power. They always have, always will," she mused aloud, voice singing down the rows of endless black tomes. "The records are all here, every one of them, each insipid and ridiculous detail of our sad and sordid past." Midna selected a book at random, opened it, then tossed it over her shoulder. "Useless!"

Howll caught the book. She could feel him glaring, hot maroon stare needling a hole between her shoulder blades. "Princess, the history of your people is hardly useless."

She stopped at the reminder and for a moment a hot wash of something almost like pain swept through her, coiling in her belly like a curl of red-hot wire. It could have been guilt. Then again if could have been her breakfast, she was feeling a bit nauseous. Then she shook it off and continued. "I know, Howll. But I'm terribly mad just now and I might be liable to say all kinds of things. Don't take it too hard if I hurt your feelings, will you?"

"I will endeavor to endure," he promised her irritably, setting the book in its proper place, disapproval rolling off him. "Princess, you've just killed a Prince of Twilight. Far be it from me to protest what idiots you choose to smite from this Realm, but I do believe his family – the second most powerful House of the Twilit Courte, mind you – might be just a little anxious about your reasons for tearing their sole heir to pieces."

Her hands flung up, a violent motion that sent the air spinning, the pages of open books reeling to their prologues. "Because he was a fool and a murderous, influential one at that. He overstepped his bounds, Howll. We Twili may not pertain to any illusions of loyalty – mere treachery I can forgive – but this was a matter of debt." Her voice ached and she cursed the rawness in her words. "We Twili may break promises, but we _always_ repay our debts –"

"–lest the shadows swallow us for our impudence," Howll finished the archaic saying. "I know. We all know. I'm just not certain your actions would be construed as judgment so much as a revenge. Justified or not, a Queen would do well to more carefully construct her arguments before she eradicates certain important figures from existence."

"But he was _so_ tedious."

"This is no time for levity. He was a _Prince_, Midna."

She spun about, whirling in a twirl of black skirts and copper hair, bright eyes flashing furious in the dim light. Howll braced himself visibly, a faint glow jumping into his dark red eyes.

"Unfathomable!" she screeched, letting her rage steal away all pretence of poise and princess-like prestige. "That I only killed Lyre was _mercy_! I should have killed each and every one of them. You have no idea what they'd unshackled from the Dark, what they've _done_." She was breathing too hard at this point, tearing her fingers through her hair, furiously dislodging tangles. "Dammit! Where's a comb when you need one?"

"Maybe if you told me…"

"I _should_ have killed them, you know. That would have taught them."

"I'm sure it would have," said Howll, vaguely sardonic as always.

"I should have!" she spat.

"Perhaps."

"Don't think I wouldn't have done it, Howll. I know what kind of respect I must command. I know duty. _I know it!_" The last three words vaulted themselves high into the ceiling, lingering there with their damning inflection: desperation and despair. Midna put her back to him again, her hand slamming against the smooth obsidian of a nearby pillar, fingers splayed against the black stone, the white of her knuckles pushing through her skin. "As if I were a _child_," she said bitterly.

Howll made a soft sound behind her. "You're not a child, Princess. You've made that much clear tonight."

She grinned somewhat recklessly. "I did, didn't I?"

"Where are we going?" the courtier asked gently. "Surely the record keepers haven't formed a coup?"

"No. I have to speak with someone," she said quietly, seriously. "Sheik is being evasive. It's his nature. I don't hold it against him but it's doing me no good to sit about and hope a dusty relic like him recalls to write me a postcard. I want to know the situation for myself."

"Will this involve killing anyone?"

"Good goddesses. It was only _Lyre_, for heaven's sake. You didn't even _like_ him."

"No," he said thoughtfully. "No, I didn't."

They reached the centre of the Record Chamber, where the ends of all obsidian shelves converged around a great blue sandstone table, the surface a smeary azure of fired glass. The stone itself still hummed with the power of the men and women whose power had forged it. The ancient stone slab, known only as the Blue, had been passed through the generations, an heirloom of their ancestors who'd once seated themselves around this very table when they decided to unmake the world and defy the gods. This was a strange and sacred place.

Midna – enthusiastically disdainful of the word 'blasphemy' – immediately climbed up on the table and hopped into the middle of it. Behind her she heard Howll groan and begin searching the shelves nearby for something.

"So much to do and so little time again, like always," she said at random, words coming easily in her distraction. She flung her arms wide and in a smattering of glassy chimes hundred of gemstones siphoned from their shelves, swirling about her like a swarm affectionate birds. "We've so much work to do." She shook her head despairingly. "As if this isn't hard enough without the time constraints. Hand me that book, will you, Howll?"

He flicked a wrist and the tome bounced off the table into her arms.

She flipped through it. "Thank you. Now could you imagine if the gods would just give me a break and let me do these things like a reasonable person? I can be reasonable, but no one ever knows it because I'm forever put in unreasonable situations. Gimme that crystal, the one by your head."

Howll scanned the area impetuously, in that methodical little way of his before spotting it lodged in the wall near his left ear. He reached back, popped it loose from the stone and tossed it to the Princess without really looking at her, absorbed in the pages of a thick, creamy-paged rule book he'd unearthed. (He was still trying to understand why it was okay that she'd just blown a Prince of Twilight to smoking bits.)

"I really can't abide all this decorum sometimes," she complained abstractly, more for the sake of filling the quiet that her usually vocal courtier was failing to. The smaller Twili didn't look up, his dark face contorted with concentration, looking remotely irritated with her distractive talking. She glared. "Honestly, Howll. If the Princess of Twilight decides to execute a traitor, I can't see why her _only real confidant_ is intent on finding her guilty of something. Put that thing down and help me balance this array."

He looked up finally, angrily. "The House of Lyrics will not be pleased. You just killed their heir. They could demand reparation of you."

"_Again_ with all that, Howll? The House of Lyrics can whine all the way back to the Dark Horizon. I've done nothing but protect them for ages now and it's about time they realized their place. Put simply, Lyre was out of line and, my dear, dear Howll, I can't be having with that." She bared her teeth in an impulsive and wicked grin, the one she used to reserve for moments of insanity, but was finding surprisingly hard to resist lately. "Besides, if they mourned that idiot long, they wouldn't be true members of the Twili would they?"

"It's not their mourning that concerns me," Howll said coolly. "We Twili don't mourn the foolish. What concerns me is that our Princess is finding it prudent to strike down members of her court for the sake of a Light-dweller." Midna spun about, white-hot fire blazing down her arms, crazy fury in her eyes. "Even," Howll said loudly, stopping her retribution short, "the Hero of Twilight. Midna, I don't discredit him. We Twili owe him everything and Lyre's treachery was a betrayal of that debt, but you must promise me you won't do it again. You _can't_ do it again. Your people will love and respect your judgment this time, but choose a Light-dweller over your own people again and they will doubt you."

She smiled serenely at the other Twili. "Howll, not even _I_ can kill someone twice. You've nothing to worry about."

"I wouldn't go _that_ far," he muttered.

The beautiful young woman only smiled a prettily insane little grin and after a moment staring – glaring, actually – he sighed and slammed the ancient book shut on the tabletop. Green glinted off the gems laid about her feet, mathematical pinpricks of crystal set in painstaking patterns all about the floor.

"I don't see how any of this helps. The Mirror of Twilight is shattered, my Princess. You cannot help even if you wanted to. This is needless torture."

"That, Howll, is simply not true," said Midna easily. "I'm a Princess of Twilight. I'll help him."

"Sheik already advised…"

"Sheik says a lot of things," she snapped. There was a hint of madness in the way she said hissed that accusation, a hysteria that faded just as fast as it ignited in that hot place beneath her heart. She sighed. "The problem is just…with the Mirror broken I thought I'd done my part," Midna explained, finally. "I thought I'd done enough to protect him…I was wrong."

"Why did you break the Mirror, Midna?" It was a dangerous question. "Really?" Now, more than ever.

For a moment she just stood there, staring at the design of gemstone arabesques about her bare feet, feeling strangely fragile without her heavy royal robes. She lifted unearthly eyes to the arching black ceiling as if in wonder, taking in the ancient bowers of the Twili carved centuries before her time and she lifted her hands gently to touch a place above her heart.

"Because I'm selfish, Howll." She closed those eyes and her fingers coiled over her breast, trembling with the pressure of curling inward. "Because I'm selfish and I know duty."

He didn't dare question her farther.

"What did the Council unleash?" Howll said harshly, breaking her grief with business.

"The One Unnamed. A true Shadow, birthed in the Dark Realm and created for one purpose and one purpose only," she said, instantly falling into her old commanding confidence. A bitter smirk twisted those lips and she crouched on the tabletop, knees splayed, hands running gently across the blue glass stone. Her voice was disdainful now. "He was created only to kill the True Hero. Goddesses…I have to give them credit for that at least. They found the one thing that might stand a chance of hurting Link in all the Realms. Damn them, doddering old fools."

The gems at her feet began to glow, light like a pool spreading beneath her hands and soaking the stone in it warm glow. Howll shrank back, eyes wide in the dark as that strange and alien radiance filled the room, thrusting beams of light like lances into every corner of the gloomy halls. Midna had no eyes for Howll, however. She sank to her knees on the Blue. The Princess was smiling into the blinding sun beneath her, undaunted by the light that used to terrify her with its brilliance.

"Princess." The word was a little weak. Howll had to raise a hand against the light. "What _is_ that?"

But she was barely listening anymore. "Hullo, idiot. I see you're still as you were." She could feel Howll staring. "Thank the gods for that."

Then the light went out.

All was quiet.

Midna remained hunched in the dark, grinning into the black stone beneath her fingers where that blinding light had been sucked down into a swirling other-world of smoke and shadow. The two Twili could see into this realm more easily and in it, made out the shape of a man standing at an angle against the glass, head upturned, as if looking over his shoulder into something overhead. Midna smirked at the familiar figure, a silhouette she'd memorized in her sleep, but wrong, utterly _wrong_.

"I see you, you bastard," she said gleefully, "shadowing his steps like a parasite."

All was quiet. Then someone was laughing, low, insane chuckle of a man verging on hysteria. Laughter of the mad vibrating through the Blue into her realm. Midna felt her skin crawl, felt the room shake with the sound of it, an eerie almost beautiful triple beat of melodious dark that was almost like _his_, almost exactly... except crazy.

"Heh, heh, heh."

"Be quiet," Midna ordered imperiously. "You know to whom you speak."

"I do," agreed the shadow. There was another abstract giggle. "But why come to me? Are you lost, child?"

"Better run and hide, little darkling. Once I catch up to you, there will be no mirrors to bring you back," Midna snarled.

The dark was quiet briefly, murk swirling in the Blue.

"I have him, little girl," said the shadow. There was a pause, as if to let that information sink in. He went on in a whisper. "I'm close enough to breathe on the nape of his neck at night, to shake him awake at dawn, whisper while he tries to think. I'm so close. Sooo close."

Midna said nothing. (Behind her, Howll was suddenly very, very afraid. Things that could silence Midna were rare indeed, rare and dangerous.)

"Are you jealous, little girl? Are you _angry_?"

Again, she said nothing.

"You must not care for him then." The shadow seemed disappointed. "Pity, I'd hoped for a little more from you, half-light whore. I'll see if I can't get him to beg your name in the darkness. That would make you happy wouldn't it?" A pause. "I can see why his light moved you. He's –"

Then he was gone.

"Princess?" Howll kept his voice low, trying to hide his urgency. He burst out, "_Midna_?"

She lifted her head, eyes glowing hot in the dark, wide with a strange and terrible awe. Her heart was in her throat, throbbing hot and fast. She hadn't realized…she'd forgotten the sound even in so short a time. She swallowed the heat.

"You know," she whispered, "I _think_…he's a little mad."

-archetype-

Link woke up cold, which put him in something of a dour mood, and like any other time the sudden _smell_ of it assaulted him. That initial burst of conscious breath where the everything and anything around him crashed his senses like a sledgehammer to the bridge of his nose and he clapped a hand over his face in an attempt to staunch the overload of information – frozen dirt, human sweat, flesh, horses, fur, packed spices, and a thousand, thousand things he could never hope to identify again, never again, not anymore...

He squeezed his eyes shut, tears gathering reflexively and he blinked them away.

Various parts of him aching or otherwise burning, he sat up just in time to see some peculiar young lady rise up suddenly from the shadowy silhouettes laying, snoring all about them. The details of her were difficult in the darkness, but she wore nothing but a single (seemingly) dark skirt and a (apparently) black cotton blouse. She carried no lantern.

Then she turned without the slightest indication she'd seen him stare, picked her way to the edge of the wagon and pulled aside one of the hanging flaps. Then the peculiar young lady set off briskly into the raging storm of snow and ice, long arms swinging, chin raised like that of a proud city-girl set off down the street for a stroll about the boulevard.

For a moment he gaped.

_My gods, did she just…_

Link lunged up immediately, snatching up a still glowing oil lamp nearby and chasing her out into the blinding white rush of the weather outside. Ashei was slumped against the wheel of the nearest wagon, fast asleep and breathing loudly. He knew that, only because if she'd been awake, she would have been up screaming and roaring down on the idiot who got up and left the wagon circle without consulting her first.

Outside, it was freezing. Raised in the temperate climates of Ordonna, Link would be the first to admit he didn't really like the cold all that much, could almost say he detested it, but necessity during his travels didn't allow for him to pick and choose his atmospheric ambiance. (_Oh, are you cold? I'm sorry; some of us aren't wearing any _clothes _and find it hard to sympathize with someone in _fur_! Whine to me when you're sitting naked in a snowdrift, not a minute before or I'll do something regrettable to your face.) _

He remembered he'd gotten used to being cold with speed relative to the number of time he got whacked across the back of the head.

The lantern bobbed over his head like an orb of ghostly yellow, the snow so thick he could barely make out his arm holding it aloft. His teeth were chattering; cold pushing rudely through his clothes with eager fingers, rushing into gaps in his cloak, working snow and wind beneath his tunic until all traces of the campfire's heat had bled away. He couldn't imagine how that girl was handling this. Somehow, he didn't think that a pale waif of a girl could possibly have superior tolerance to the cold than he did unless she too had been subject to similar conditioning.

Likewise that burning sensation running along the marrow of his bones – the one he'd long since come to associate with things _unpleasant_ – told him something was wrong. The tell-tale prickle at the back of his neck told him, should he ever come to possess wolfish hackles again, they'd be up.

The girl's footprints faded almost as fast as she could make them, leaving only the barest signs for him to follow. More disturbing still, the tracks she left detailed the outline of a very delicate set of toes, meaning she wore no shoes. The insanity of that drove him to question whether or not the girl was altogether rational. She'd only had a short head start on him, but he couldn't see her and again he couldn't fathom that a tiny little stripling of a girl could out pace him. Most suspicious of all:

He couldn't smell her.

_Again with all that? Don't you think after a year you should have stopped thinking like a beast, already? _

Never.

_That's my idiot._

Then he turned around, wondering in a faint panic if he hadn't run passed her in the dark and left her behind? Did he go the wrong way? What if –

And then she all but stepped straight into him, striding straight out of the dark with the intent of a girl possessed and her hand flashed up so fast he thought for an instant she meant to strike him. Then her wrist crashed against the lantern and batted it viciously to the ground. A musical crash of glass and metal in the snow, the light went out instantly and dark cold plunged in around them.

He opened his mouth, something like a warning, something like shout on his tongue, but before he could even think to move, she caught his wrist and held it tight. The sudden touch, too intimate for strangers sent a jolt of alarm down his spine and instinctively he tried to draw it back, but she yanked his arm to her and the young hero _staggered_, shocked by her strength. Then her fingers fit into the space the lantern vacated, a slim hand sliding neatly into his, he sensed the smirk because he couldn't see it in the darkness...

A surge of heat lunged up through his palm and swam up the length of his arm, like a wash of bathwater through his veins.

All around them the world swirled with snow, but somehow the winter held no away over him and this strange summer touch; like he was wrapped in a blanket of hot noonday air, shielded against the snow. It felt good, he couldn't deny that. When you were cold, you wanted heat and she certainly had that, but that not constitute ignoring various suspicious indicators such as 'How the hell did she do _that_?' and 'How did she manage to sneak up on _me_?'

Then her other into his free hand and she stepped in close – far too close – to him and with a delicate little side step she pulled him into a quarter-circle rotation. Then another, and another _(There was a breath of familiarity, like perfume, half-remembered sessions with royalty spinning around, glitter and glamour and gloved hands on his shoulder.)_ and for one reason or another he altogether stopped caring how, or why, or for that matter about anything else at all.

Vaguely he could hear it, the sound of their footsteps crunching through distant snow, thickly crusted on the ground of some faraway kingdom. Part of him struggled, that fierce instinctive part of him that didn't forfeit unto anything, but the rest of him didn't seem capable of resistance. Link didn't know for how long they danced, whirling and spinning together on a cold, dark mountain road. The young woman was tireless, relentless in her need to move and to have him move with her. He worried she might be cold. Oh, certainly, _he_ was warm enough, but _she_ wore so little.

Maybe she danced to keep warm? It would be rude to stop at this point, if that was all that kept her comfortable. It would be impolite, he remembered, to just stop. Impolite. That was the word he remembered…

_(A voice counting steps softly in his ear, tense, slightly nervous and he wanted to laugh because it was so silly to care about something like being off a count. But it was something she desperately cared about, wanted him to care about, so he did but at the expense of his temporary sanity. He remembered the smell, the lovely, heady scent of a girl raised apart from a world of rot and work. And he remembered that silly noxious perfume she dampened her skin with, how it burned his nose and set his teeth on edge. Did she not realize she could intoxicate on pheromones alone?)_

His arms ached, but the girl kept him steady. How she could keep this pace, the ranch-hand couldn't fathom. Not even the courtiers had been so lively. Not even Zelda had kept him so long…

_(The room stifled him; perfumes and powders and jewels and gilt pressing in on him from everywhere, pressing the air out of the vacuum around him and he was breathing too hard, panicked birds ramming about in his ribcage. Everyone around him laughed and danced, chitting and chattering, utterly _horrifying_. As he twirled with the rest of them, following their steps without thought beyond reflex he wondered in terror if anyone would even notice. ) _

He felt tired. Just a little. Link wanted to stop but stopping was impolite and gods forbid he be impolite. Gods forbid he offend someone…

_(His eyes jumped to Zelda, miles away, speaking to someone else, not even looking, not even aware. She wouldn't notice. How could they notice in all this poison? The choking human stink, prim and pampered bodies crowded him, hundreds of beautiful, brilliant gowns and gallantry. Pushing, pulling, _obsessed_ with their dancing, stupid meaningless spinning and twirling. The woman in his arms touching him, trying to yank him into the next sequence of silly, stupid steps – stop it, stop trying to pull me, STOP! STOP IT!)_

"Link! My gods! _Grab_ him!"

Hands seized his shoulders, two more his elbows, arms capturing his waist and dragging him to a stop. He realized with only the most cursory of acknowledgements that it took three men to arrest his movement, wondering vaguely why he kept trying to move or why they were trying to stop him. Then Ashei was standing in front of him (when had that dark girl vanished?) and she had her gloves buried in his hair, tangled up in his bangs, yelling in his face but he couldn't understand her.

The woman collared him against her, arm looping his shoulders and hugging him into her chest while she shouted at the men around her to get back to the wagons and bring warm blankets. The world spun suddenly and for a moment he blacked out, aware only through a muted sense of touch and sound that people were tugging him down the road, pulling him back inside the safety of the camp. There were shouts of relief, loud, passionate oaths of worried mothers, angry men. Someone tucked a heavy blanket around him, pushing him down by the fire, the heat of it burning bright orange and color bled back into the world.

He couldn't feel anything but someone was rattling his head painfully and his fingers felt odd, as if they were burning and somewhere in the back of his mind someone was yelling into his thoughts, trying to wake him up and Ashei was struggling to unclasp his bracers from his arms, fumbling with the frozen fastenings, finger picking uselessly at the buckles. Little streams of profanity leaked from her mouth, harsh, angry, urgent.

"Link. Link look at me," she ordered. She grabbed his chin and jerked his gaze to hers, held it. "Look at me. Don't close your eyes, don't you dare go to sleep. You keep your eyes on me and keep them open, yeah?" She shook him. "_Yeah_?"

He nodded dizzily.

"Someone get me some herbal potion. Get the red one, blue if you've got it. Gods dammit..." She curled her hands around his and breathed heavily into her palms, the damp heat of her breath swirling around his aching fingers, wrapped secured between the painful warmth of her hands. The sensation of that brought him slowly around from the sleepy stupor, the feeling of chap lips brushing slightly against blistered and frost-bitten fingertips. There was a strange keening in his ears that he couldn't place, a steady, irritating pitch.

Through it people were talking loudly, voices jumping out through the melee like children rushing out of a crowd.

"Thought he was dead –"

"–for almost an hour."

"–caught him _dancing_!"

"It's a damned blizzard out there. Kid's lucky he didn't–"

"I dunno. A waltz I think."

"–have frozen to death!"

Ashei crouched beside him, uncorking a bottle handed off to her and before he could protest pushed it against his mouth, the shock of it parting his lips and allowing her access to dump the contents forcefully down his throat. He swallowed only to keep from choking and sputtered afterward, coughing.

"Serves you right," she hissed, jamming the bottle in his face again, like an obscure punishment. "You damn fool. You _idiot_! What the hell were you doing out there?"

After he wrestled the potion away from the angry mountaineer – shocked to find his fingers white, burnt with cold – Link tried to formulate an answer but suddenly found none forthcoming. What _had_ he been doing out there?

The details were there on the fringe of his memory, like those of a vivid dream he only just awoke from but already they slipped away, leaking away from him before he could properly grasp them. Blurred remnants of a blackened face, uncounted minutes and the hot, sizzling burn he remembered (Zant raising up before him, black power like ozone poisoning the air, terror seized up in his chest at the realization: _Gods, I'm not strong enough!_) like an old war wound.

Ashei was watching him like a furious hawk, dark eyes zeroed in on his eyes own frantic blue gaze, watching the memories struggle to be chased through the back of his eyes until he finally gave up. He stared at her with a kind of strange and dawning horror. The older women continued to give him that long, hard look until speaking finally in a voice edged with some unknowable emotion, her expression deadened and grim.

"You don't know… do you?" she whispered.

He swallowed hard.

And for the first time in a long time was properly scared.

-archetype-

_**Author's Note: **__Sorry for the hiatus. Finals and such. I'm on my way to Japan for spring break so I thought a nice long chapter would be nicer than the two this was supposed to be. Critiques are good. Helps me see this thing in a different light than my own. _


	6. Wanton

Wanton

_I've seen Zoras laugh underwater, seen Gorons stranded on their backs like pill bugs, seen a Hylian get his ear stuck in a questionable cranny, but never in all my years have I ever seen a single child of the Sheikah remove their mask to enjoy the light of the sun._

_- Truths of a Well Traveled Mask Salesman_

It didn't particularly startle her that he'd circumvented the barricades and locks – after all what were bolts and tumblers to a thing of sand and shadow? –, nor did it come as great surprise that he'd come in unheard. She knew the nature of what he was and well enough to credit him that at least. That he'd come in completely undetected by _her, _however, did come as something of a quandary. Perhaps it shouldn't have; he had a couple hundred years of knowledge on her after all, certainly he knew some way by which to come that she was yet unaware of.

It was just that it must have been a narrow way indeed, because she felt confident she knew the majority (of ways that was) to reach someone like herself undetected. She was not without sources.

The stones themselves whispered to her, the air and glass and bowers of Hyrule Castle old as the kingdom itself answered to her. If not the stone, if not the air, if not the rain water running down the glass outside her balcony than surely her wards, her spells, her intricately laid network of magical trappings should have tripped, should have at least shivered at his passing. But not a single one did. As if he didn't even exist in this world, he'd come straight through everything to the heart of it and found her.

And since he'd found her, she figured he was at least entitled to an answer, however abrupt.

"Pardon?" she inquired.

"I do think you heard me very well the first time," he said demurely.

The young man swung a leg down from the window sill and turned, head tilted at a queer angle to consider her. He was strange. Long bangs – blonde as her own, shot through with roots so pale as to be white – hung like twin curtains into alien eyes. Bare skin where she could find it (the scant space about his eyes and the back of his hands) was the lightly browned color of those easily tanned. The folded cloth of his facemask draped the bridge of a thin nose, hiding all but the most damning feature in his face: Those great sunset red eyes, dark and vivid as summer apples, Power pooling in every flutter of his eyelids.

Her heart beneath her breastbone had developed a kick of its own, leaping crazily inside her with an instinctive childhood terror she worked to squash since before she understood duty. She couldn't allow menial bedtime terror tales of the Cursed People poison her reaction. She couldn't allow ancient hatred frighten her. She couldn't _really_ let herself believe that the young man standing lazy and languid in the corner of her window was _that_ Seer, the last and the first of those who were lost. Those who hated.

Damned of the desert.

"So," she said, a little stiffly, "you came. Alone? In secret and in shadow I suppose."

The intruder seemed more amused than he had previously, those thin, gold brows lifting. "Secret? Shadow? My dear Princess, I walked right through the front door with one of your own men, cheh." He spoke in a clear unknowable accent, one that churned his words into strange shapes and soft additional sounds. His eyes glittered bloody. "You've got good people working under you, but then again you girls usually do…what ever good it does you."

Zelda ignored the ambiguous dig at her family. "Why are you here?" she insisted.

He tossed his eyes aside, then his head in a peculiar gesture. "I'm seeing that I keep my promises, Zelda. That's what I'm good at, remember. It is a favor to a friend that has me in your company this time and I promise it to be the last time I'm in your company if I can help it." There was a kind of underlying chill in his words.

"Are you an assassin?"

She didn't think it would hurt to ask. The rumors had been accurate enough in description to alert her to his coming (she almost wondered if he hadn't let the rumors be heard just to get her moving before he arrived) and her tutors had never ducked on details about this particular grudge-bearer. If he was who she thought – who the scholars said he was – then fearing for herself, fearing for Link, fearing for the whole thrice-damned country wasn't excessive by even a bit.

He made a low, halting noise indistinguishable as a laugh.

"Meh, assassin? Yes, yes I suppose I am in a fashion, or was before, maybe after, but I've long since abandoned that vendetta, cheh, and I'm not here for that this time. I could later be, like I said, but not now. I'm busy now and I haven't time to play that particular Path to my liking. I'm an envoy."

"Who's envoy?" She took a handkerchief from the table and used it to wipe the blood off her fingers, clotting the little wounds with it. "Have the Gerudo come out of their hiding to make peace?"

"Maa, what questions, Princess. A Gerudo wouldn't take the time to dirty her blade in my black blood, much less make me an envoy." His dark eyes spoke everything his hidden face could not, barbed intensity in his stare. "No, I'm afraid my mistress is of a more familiar sort to you, _mala_?"

She didn't recognize the last word, but she recognized the inflection. He could tell she understood too, the quick intelligence flashing through his eyes as she moved away from the table to one of the bookshelves to her left, laying her unwounded fingers on the leathery spines for comfort. Her visitor stood roughly half a head taller than Link might have, but lacked the Ordonian's sturdy build. Through the loose folds of his leggings and tunic she could see a slenderer man. If the smoothness of his eyes were any indication, he couldn't be older than twenty-four.

And yet…that entire meager body swam with such internal heat that it breathed through his clothes like candle flame.

The room had shrunk in around them, the walls of the ancient palace leaning down to listen, hanging on this boy's fluting, breathy syllables. There was Power in him, that strange and indelible kind of _knowing_ that shivered through the air all about him. Every inch of that long, wiry frame felt of heat and sand, of dunes and fire, of wind and spirit.

He felt…_old_.

"Then you're here to change the Paths," she said without preamble.

He arched a brow. "You know the Paths?"

"If you are who I think." Her hand ached in that familiar way and all at once, like recollecting a long gone memory, desert air and desert wind swam up from somewhere inside her, perfumed halls and old blood that breathed so familiar and…

_(He stands with his back to the royalty of Hyrule, arrayed in ornamental splendor behind him, his hands still dripping sticky fluid cherry on the polished marble, soaking into the crooked red carpet and sucking down deep inside the plush, camouflaged in scarlet. Whose it is, his own, enemies', allies', no one, probably not even he knows. And somewhere in the room someone is laughing, a strange and eerie kind of hysteria that throws itself in peals around the room and she wonders which courtier has gone insane. There is a lot of insanity passing itself around these days, like a virulent string of nightmare that infects one then the other in quick succession._

_But the courtiers aren't laughing. No one is (the War is over after all, there's nothing left to go mad about, right? Only the ugly, sober truth in the aftermath, after all.). The one laughing simply has his back to them is all, the one laughing simply isn't known for laughing, the one laughing is supposed to be a shadow. Since when do shadows laugh? Since when do they scream? Since when do they crawl out of the final battle, alone, so feral and bloody that the entire Hyrulian vanguard can't move a step to help?_

_She doesn't like to imagine what kind of thing that last battle left alive, the thing hiding in this hollow shell of a human in front of them, laughing at royalty only because he can't cry. At her right the King moves on his throne, as if to comfort the lone warrior. But the laughter instantly cut off and he hisses; a fast and cobra quick sound and a flash of dark eyes. The monarch freezes. Freezes because there is insanity in those scarlet eyes that's never been, where blood and horror and treachery tore his mild good-humor out and flooded it with hate. _

_And they remember he is the deadliest man in the kingdom._

_And they remember they've just let his people die. _

_And they remember he warned them._

_The King sits back and the Queen wonders if he, too, is waiting to die._

"_No words. No pities. No apologies." He isn't laughing. His voice is ragged with the effort of it, though. "I'll take what's left, what few there are. We chose to die on this alien land for your alien cause, we kept our vow and it is through. We've only one Path left and you will not take it from us. Do you understand, mir'hezzeh?"_

_The King says nothing. _

"_If you follow, I'll eradicate your bloodline like you did mine, oh King." He laughs again, that hollow noise. "Keep my Name. We shadows have no concept of debt, but we always keep our promises to whatever dark end they may bring. This is mine: I will come back when they are gone. Pray I've forgiven you when I do."_

_Then he walks out of the palace. No one follows him. No one dares._

_The Queen, in the silence, whispers only to herself, in shame…)_

"…Sheik." Zelda rocked back slightly, blinking the world away from her eyes like a thousand colored veils until that very same Sheikah stood before her once again, his face to the Queen like he hadn't been capable of all those centuries ago. "You're Sheik."

The Sheikah had one shoulder hitched up against the window frame, watery moonlight burning his blonde hair white. She could feel him smiling beneath the mask, the quirk of lips behind the dark pleats of cloth. She feared that smile. There was too much horror, a history of it burned into his blood and into his being, for a smile to be safe on his lips. She waited.

"Hn, I suppose I am."

And she shuddered at that confirmation.

"So the Sheikah are dead," she said quietly. "You're the last."

"I've returned haven't I?"

"We…" She paused, uncertain of the account, it had been so many years, so many generations… "We don't have your Name. It's gone."

"I'm here because I'm asked to be, cheh, not for a relic like that. I left it as lost long before your family could do away with it." He pushed himself off the sill without a sound and stood to his full (the records had gotten it all wrong, he was pretty tiny) height, cracking his fingers individually and strolling down the row of books.

"You're here because Link is missing?"

"My mistress is…eh, intimately interested in the matter. Yes."

Zelda felt something catch inside her, but none of that showed when she spoke. "And you're hers?"

He inclined that head again, a question in his eyes.

She clarified, "_Midna_." The name breathed of warm darkness, velveteen and familiar.

The Sheikah tilted his head straight, shoulder shrugging up briefly. "Maa, I suppose so. Though, I've made a point never to belong to anyone in particular. Princesses especially." He inspected the room without interest. "They're selfish almost without exception."

"I do…_appreciate_ your duty to her and I have nothing but respect for Midna, but–" She sought out diplomatic words, finding none particularly forthcoming. "–whether or not Link goes missing is not a concern of the Twilight Princess." She could see Link's expression (he always did hover there in the back of her thoughts, like Midna's caricature had once done); intense blue eyes that darkened, going cold with disappointment before anger.

But he wasn't here.

And fear that he might never be pushed her on.

"Though her intentions may be good, I want to know why she finds it prudent to interfere with the affairs of Hyrule."

She thought it a sensible fact to address.

Sheik stared at her for a long, long and again long moment. There was something in his eyes, through the jagged sheets of uneven white-gold bangs, though what it was, exactly, she couldn't say. Then he laughed; a simple sound, resonate and cruel. All at once she was acutely aware that it would be no stretch for him to kill her, no stretch for him to hate her, less a stretch to suppose that he would ally himself with a Princess of a foreign Realm and she wondered if a mind is really made to last over a hundred years.

His tone was amused. "You think the Princess conspires against you?" he asked, almost playfully.

"Against me, yes; I could fathom so. Against Link, never."

She spoke without thinking and after it was said, found it true. She'd never known the Twili in any fashion that accurately reflected their nature, not ever, so she hadn't known to suspect. Midna taught her. She knew better now. 'Trust' to a Twili is an abstract subject to any and all capricious interpretations. She would be foolish not to suspect. After a moment, when it was sufficiently obvious she had nothing to say to her defense, those incinerating red eyes trailed away again and he rapped a knuckle against the spine of one large book.

"You need to read up, cheh. That scrying of yours didn't work because you're using a mirror. Not that water would be a better choice. Ahh, no, he'd reach right through and rip your lily white skin right off you, _mir'henna._" He glanced about, blonde strands swinging loosely into his eyes. "Do you know who I'm talking about?"

"That thing, the one in the mirror, it's a darkling."

He blinked at her. "Darkling? Is that the, ah, word now? _Darkling_?"

"I'll make this clear: I don't have time for long passed resentments, Sheik. I cannot waste my time, or Link's, while you explore the depths of my ignorance," said Zelda quietly, flexing her slim digits into claws, then back. "Just tell me what I need to know. I can't act until I know." That confession burned her tongue.

The seer demurred lazily. "Maa, I've never heard that term, is all."

"I don't have another translation. Old Hylian records only make one or two mentions of darklings as it is." She heard her own words slither away into quotations, again, as usual. She recited: "A darkling is a creature born of pure darkness, exposed to the light and given form to walk in the world of men as a shadow, as a wraith. They're nightmare tales for bedtime terrors here in Hyrule. How did Midna, ruler of Twilight, know of this one's movements?"

The Sheikah inspected the back of his hand as he spoke. "The House of Midnight has kept watch for generations, cheh, sparing an eye for that Mirror and one for the Dark Realm. Much like your ancestors kept the treasures of the goddesses, they were guards, were the gate-keepers in a fashion. The One Unnamed is what they called him, a Shadow of the Dark Realm. It's been the duty of Midna's tribe to keep him at bay for a century. That's why she knows. _Mala_?"

"Tell me about the One Unnamed," Zelda ordered. "What do you know?"

"He's a killer," he said at last. "Nothing else."

Well, at least he was being direct now.

"He's the reflection of the ancient hero, a soul shadow, a monster. Created by Ganondorf nearly a century past for the sole purpose of destroying the ancient hero. When neither could defeat the other, Ganon stripped the Shadow of his form in this world and cast him back into the Dark Realm, trapped in the black between Light and Twilight. The Twili recognized the danger and with their magic they bound him to the Dark and held him dormant. He's mad, completely insane, cheh, but that won't stop him from killing your Hero."

"The ancient hero wasn't killed," Zelda pointed out. "Why can't Link match this remnant, as well?"

"Link's not carrying his sword, not the evil's bane and what few favorable Paths that remain are fading away, _mir'henna_. Remember, the One Unnamed had a hundred years to anticipate this murder." He let that hang in the air a moment, watching it resonate there with interest. Looking grimly amused, he added, "I doubt very much he'll get it wrong at this point. That much I've Seen."

"How can I trust your Eye, Sheikah," asked Zelda cruelly, stoically, "when it did your people so very little good?"

And then Sheik looked at her.

_Really_ looked at her.

Sheik's eyes, she was just now beginning to understand, were a terrifying mixture of dark wine and raspberry. When they had you in their thrall they intoxicated and stupefied, leaving one's breath shallow in the aftermath of their scrutiny. He gazed at her as if he'd never beheld her like, as if he could find everything in her face, as if he could See and for an instant the air around her rippled and distorted with the Power of that gaze. And all at once she knew what he was Seeing and she...

_(…because he's told her, not with words so much as small pained expressions, tiny exasperated bursts of air, slightly bared teeth that wanted to be fangs, that perhaps the palace is not his place. That he's vanished halfway through the court function – just a formality, really, not even a real function so much as a little get together – still surprises her however. Discreetly she departs under some pretense to find him because for some reason his being out of her sight unsettles some stranger, alien part of her sensibilities... _

"…_are refusing knighthood?" she clarifies, speaking softly trying not to let the hurt of that show, but even while serenity reigns her features he seems to know. Like the chemical stink of it, disappointment (bitter ammonia and turpentine) secretes from every inch of her skin and he wrinkles his nose very slightly, wincing. And yet it's not enough to turn him back. And it's not enough to erase that starving look from his gaze, fierce and feral and so violently alive that it seems impossible when he gives her that impotent smile, apologetic, like some weakling mortal mask…_

…_are parts of her that ache obscurely after some equally Obscure Object, some wanton thing that only an imp knew but left, emblazoned and blistered deep inside her. There are places in the walls of her soul that Midna carved her wicked wants into, places where reason and wisdom don't reach, can't stretch to buff out the scratches. She has dreams that aren't hers, giggles when she shouldn't, hums songs she doesn't know, and finds the smell of the market and fresh-cut hay more intoxicating than any other aroma…_

…_uncounted hours, spots him standing on the balcony railing, balanced impossibly on the balustrade with his arms flung wide, smiling recklessly into the sunset. Like he can take up the molten gold world and hold it locked in time beside him. And she thinks, for just an instant, that the wind is singing, that the air is humming, that there is an indelible vibration, like music in every particle of existence, harmonizing in her bones. And yet she is deaf to its melody…)_

... tore her eyes away. And she had to slam her hand against the table to stop the instinctive spell that burned up the back of her throat and into her arm. Liquid heat dripped, flooded her fingers. Power. Magic. Art. She gave a short, wordless exclamation to erase the curse, unearthed from the bottom of some unread tome, some black spell book none but her own eyes had seen in centuries and she turned her own hot gaze on her guest, the power of that unfinished hex lending her strength and impropriety.

Sheik was sitting on the table, having knocked books off to clear a space for himself. He watched her still.

"Don't," she whispered fiercely, "do that again, Sheikah."

"I _do_ See," he said plainly. "You should recognize Truth, Princess. We Sheikah don't often lie. You've Seen that yourself. I know Wisdom always has a gift for reading the past – don't think I didn't notice you looking, I did – but I've a knack for all of it. Ganon had an eye for the future and Link has one for the present. That's the nature of the Chosen, to each their own. "

She noticed the accent was falling off, devolving into something softer. There was a strange serenity about him now, a kind of hypnotic monotony that slithered through his shoulders and spine. His eyes fluttered at erratic intervals, gaze locked on something beyond her.

"He's so much more than an ideal. He's a creature set apart, the wildest magic harnessed into a single person; _blessed_ by Farore so much so I'm personally shocked by it. Link's far more than a knight and you know that too, because Princess, _she_ knew that." Those luminous eyes found her own again, brilliant and cat-like in the dimness of the moonlight. "You know he'll run for the sake of being chased."

She sighed because she could think of nothing else to do. "Sheik, you overstep what few bounds you have left to cross," said Zelda, reaching up to massage her temple. "Tread carefully."

He laughed softly, ironically.

"I don't know why Midna has such faith in you. Maa, this task I would do alone, but there is no one else with power enough to stop him There is no one left to do this. I've Seen many Paths and all of them have some inkling of your role in them. You cannot stand by and throw your sword down this time."

Zelda stiffened before she could stop herself. A sharp, painful heat burst into flame in her belly and she flung her hands to her sides, chin raising high because she knew she could do nothing else. What had she done, back then after all, but stand with an ornamental blade in hand and hope? What good had her magicks done then, against forces that lay outside her own reins of power, forces that surged against the Light like black ocean waves that would never recede? None and less than nothing.

"And why would I trust you?" she asked evenly.

Sheik pulled a charm from the folds of his tunic, a bone white token emblazoned with a staring crimson Eye, weeping a single stoic tear. "You'll trust me because I lost my whole race to your family's negligence and I'll be damned before I watch one more good thing die because your selfishness."

"What do you need?"

-_mask_-

**Author's Note: **Good God! This chapter gave me ulcers. I hope someone gets a kick out of it because I mostly got a headache. Sheik was a fun, irritatingly opaque character to write, but _dammit_ I'm not getting any better about getting the point, am I? I apologize. Great thanks goes out to those lovely readers out there who are sticking with me and my confuzzling (read: non-existent) plot. But I hear, at least, everyone's enjoying the pretty things I go on and on about for hours.

Hoping to rein myself in by the next chapter, finally start writing that Shadow before I die of impatience. Critiques are appreciated as always (Chaotic Serenity, thanks bunches) because I have no beta reader and as kick ass as writing these character is, I'm pretty bad about putting a lid on myself. Help is needed. Thanks oodles!


	7. Trust

Trust

_It's said that if a Gerudo woman ever kissed a Sheikah, she would become a fairy and he a stone. On an unrelated note, it's been chronicled that over several hundred Gossip Stones exist all across the country. Fairies are nearly uncountable in number._

_- Hylian Mythology_

He remembers the first attack in a blurry kind of way.

He'd fallen asleep; the first real sleep after nearly three months of terror induced insomnia. The nights before and after escaping Hyrule Castle (that twilit distortion) were always blur of lightless hours for him; thrashing and writhing, caught somewhere between sleep and consciousness for no other reason than to banish the emptiness in his head. Emptiness where the faces of his friends as he'd been shown – screaming, twisted and unrecognizable – swam up like bioluminescent fish from the back of his mind. Sleep gave them a chance to float to the surface.

It never occurred to him that she might betray him. Treachery seemed impossible, but then again, the fact he even thought it was treachery by that point was a testament to his vulnerability. That he'd stopped being conscious of his shadow.

He supposed she didn't like to be treated so familiarly.

He thought he was still dreaming when it happened and wished he had been the moment he realized he wasn't. Even now he can't say what precisely made her do it, what kind of sociopathic impulse fired through her blood. (Who attacks sleeping farm-boys, after all?) He just remembers the ragged horror as something seizes him, fists his tunic, clamps his arms, loops jointless elbows in the fulcrum of his knees rendering him utterly immobile and – still hallucinating faceless monstrosities and slathering arachnid nests – slams him up against the base of a tree.

Those first hectic moments are ones he can't ever forget, the smeary synesthesia of his own screams – panicked– and the impossibility of his attacker, a membranous mass of iridescent amber and mottled light, throbbing and alive, winding his legs, engulfing his wrists and he's yelling because it's the thing to do more than anything and he can't move, can't even see – and then his monster buries her face in the sensitive crook of his neck, near the juncture of his ear and snickers.

"Eee, hee, hee. What's the matter?" Her words leave hot traces on his skin, her face so close he can feel the heat of her, finally flesh rather than shadow. She's taking full advantage of being tangible and in the back corner of his mind a part of him damns their tragic other princess for giving her the gift. She leers melodically. "I scare you?"

He squirms, recoiling from that treacherous question and she laughs; a weird keening spiral of notes. Her tiny body is a disproportionate shape in the darkness. A collection of childish doll-like limbs, cobbled together like the pieces of a blue and black porcelain puzzle. Pieces – printed with glowing nephrite script, arcane and unknown – all fit together in illogical perfection, suspended on unseen forces of anti-gravity before him. The roundness of her little face is almost entirely dominated by that eye though, wide and wicked, burning like almond shaped piece of autumn in the broken gap of her rubble crown.

She drifts in close, pulls her mouth against the side of his face, tapered fangs grinning against his skin. He can feel her smile; that evil, psychotic slice of insanity like a botched kiss or a prelude to a bite. Her breath smells strange, as if she's not breathing the same air but simply exhaling some part of her bizarre world into the curve of his ear, like a noxious secret he can't ignore.

"Why do you trust me, Link?" The skin where she touches him is hot, swarming with impossible rivers of ant legs and needles. The glowing neon fingers – tendrils really, it's her hair of all things – curl lecherously around his knees, pinning his arms. "What makes you think you can trust _meeee_?"

-_gossip_-

Something was spooking the horses.

Furthermore, something was spooking the humans.

Nothing serious had happened yet, not yet, but it seemed inevitable that eventually, inevitably, something would. The children followed a phantom whistling tune, one that often led them off the trail into dark parts of the woods before Link stopped them. The merchants hallucinated strangers on the road, men or boys lounging on the edge of the path, lurking in venues of gloom that made their existence an uncertainty in itself. Ashei felt something breathing nearby when nothing should be and Link woke up tasting blood these days.

What that meant, if anything, neither the Hero – ancient or otherwise – nor the blue-eyed beast could begin to fathom.

His nightmares were formless blurs; endless black marked only by the _terror_, the blind, gut-wrenching dread without any recognizable reason or rhyme. He woke up choking on names he knew he shouldn't utter and a taste he should endeavor to forget. In spite of that, he just rinsed his mouth out with snow and peppermint and attempted to ignore that hot, seething burn nesting beneath his skin. He figured if he could pretend hard enough, the other members of the wagon train would stop looking at him like one might look at Hyrule's lonely, loony post man (or was it Post Man?).

Fear slowed progress to a molasses slow pace. As a result she took to gritting her teeth so hard the enamel squeaked and Link worried ineffectively over the health of her jawbone. If one could conceivably grit their teeth away, Link figured she might do that soon. Teeth gritting – he'd deciphered – was colloquial Ashei for: '_Goddess_, let me _decapitate_ something!' and he smiled a little wanly because, honestly, he didn't have the energy for anything else.

Ashei had to call the train to a halt for the fifth time that day so Link could chase down a hysterical mare. It was a large roan this time, rearing back with a blood-curdling whinny of terror, forelegs flailing, eyes rolling; she bolted from the group, tearing her lead rein free and thundering past the ranch-hand. Link wheeled Epona round, yelling something meaningless to everyone but the horse then kicked Epona into a gallop.

Typically it took the ranch-hand two minutes to tame a rogue filly. Today, well… today it took him nearly ten minutes just to chase the animal down, to say nothing of lunging out of the saddle onto bare back – a feat far harder than anyone was giving him credit for – and wrangling her back to docility. He laid part of the blame on being under the weather. The rest he blamed entirely on the air. There was something peculiar about the air today, something strange.

Things were different. For whatever reason.

Link lunged out of one stirrup, grabbing her mane and hauling himself onto the roan's broad back. The mare's fear leeched the air of any warmth, taking the heat and poisoning it: a deep smoldering ache that she injected through contact into her unorthodox rider, buzzing through his palms deep into his bones, jittering through his head. Back before horrible black monsters were raining from the sky, Link had never been subject to bestial empathies. Unfortunately, it seemed having one's head rearranged to accommodate muzzle and fangs had similarly rearranged his head for hearing other animals.

The fact that he no longer had a wolf's ears to hear them with had absolutely nothing to do with it.

_All the better to eat you with, my dear!_ cackled that melodious muse in his brain.

_Shut up,_ he thought abstractly.

Meanwhile the mare had plunged off the road into the deep woods around the trail and Link was being systematically beaten to dead by tree limbs, branches smacking and bruising both rider and the ridden, only the horse unaffected on account of blind terror. The young ranch-hand pulled himself forward and laid his chest against the long curve of her neck. He could feel the sinuous tension in her quivering shoulders, rippling muscles coiling and bunching beneath his fingers, transmitting wordless messages of fear like Morse code into his bloodstream.

_What are you afraid of?_

But the ability to ask verbatim was one skill he'd forfeit almost a year ago, one out of a multitude.

He was getting sick of listening to himself whine about it, actually.

Instead he laid his head against her nape, rejoined in another tongue (a wordless language of sensation and vibration) and murmuring deep in his throat, let his tone treble through flesh and bone. He hushed her. But despite his best efforts nothing could convince her that the roads were safe. There was evil in her nostrils, predators in her peripheral, great liquid eyes swiveling skittish circuits in her skull. She stopped, but didn't calm. He patted her neck soothingly, but they both knew it was half-hearted.

The really awful thing was the sensation that he half-understood her fear.

_For you are wolfish,_ interrupted Midna's remnant, _and therefore qualified to translate for pack-mules!_

Whether it was real or just another echo of the wolf still in him – singing residual vibrations in his bones – he couldn't tell.

Like the smell of a childhood memory buried under years of dust and living, he could almost recall that acrid stink, that musky, slightly dewy scent that foreshadowed some awful thing. Worse, lately he woke up smelling it. A deep, deep, neglected part of him bucked crazily inside; like some awkward fisherman had hooked the wolf in his belly was bound and determined to yank it out through the back of his throat. It didn't help that every night he woke up thinking there was some alien weight inhabiting his shadow.

His hands ached.

Link blinked down to find they'd curled into white-knuckled knots against the back of the roan's neck, shaking very slightly with the force he exerted against himself. There was a strange heat crawling up the curve of his spine and spreading in a warm, sickly fashion from his shoulder-blades into the rest of him. His skin was hot, too hot, edging on that white-hot climax that used to play precursor to something feral. Vaguely some guilty depth inside him ached after the feeling.

He dismounted and took the reins. The roan horse swung her head around, staring at him with those dark eyes, wide and afraid, refracting an animal world of bone-deep fear and –

"Heh, heh, heh."

Link pivoted. In that strange way it always did, his sword was in his hand by the time the world got stationary again. Fingers folded around the hilt in symbiotic need. But there wasn't a need this time.

There was no one there.

And then he felt foolish, standing there with a useless blade in hand, boots braced too wide with his hair (or was it his mind?) in disarray. Nothing there. Nothing. Nothing but that smell; there, but for the bothersome fact it was impossible for a feeble human nose to detect any such thing. Like chasing phantom maidens into snow storms: it was madness. Pure and simple.

He figured this should have perturbed him more than it did, but spending time in proximity with a meta-physical imp for a companion had weaned him off conventional interpretations of sanity. If anyone was entitled to be a little bit nutty, who but him after all? He breathed through his mouth a few times and after a moment (shaking himself slightly) he sheathed his sword again.

In retrospect, the decision wasn't a good one.

When the attack hit, the roan's scream – crazed and wild – came after the fact.

"Well, well, well, well, that's faster than I thought," snickered someone.

Link was clawing back to his feet, ears ringing, sword still humming the metal chord that came with blocking a two-handed decapitation swing – _from beneath, he came at me below, how? _– the young hero ducked. Dove away from the second swing, narrowly evading the whistling black blade that smashed through – _Oh _gods! – the roan's skull, cleaving through the mass of bone and meat, hewing the head messily from the body in it's eagerness to have him. And blankly he thought, _Ashei is going to kill me. That's horse was merchandise._

Then Link threw himself wide as the dead weight of the entire horse came down with a tremendous crash, a wet arc of blood splashing his wrists and ankles as – _tell-tale hiss: helm-splitter! – _he ducked and rolled, evading by inches the blade that scythed down at the crown of his skull. His shoulder slammed awkwardly as he came up, staggering and whirling around to stop the crescent slice whistling up at his throat.

A ringing parry, retreat, then return.

His opponent zig-zagged at him, lunging black-cat quick.

Link leapt back and caught the mocking hiss, "What a _pretty_ thing to kill!"

Hard contact, dodge, counter. The attacks came as a blur of motion, like a dance done only in dreams, marked by the lethal hiss of steel and there was that dark ozone stink, the smell of Dark magic. His opponent was swathed in it, bleeding black like steam, fogging the air with the seething inky nimbus. He was hard to make out in the mess, but a guess pegged the other fighter roughly his height, weight and build, wearing an ashen tunic, a muddy silhouette.

The Link that still lived happily in Ordonna with goats was remotely horrified – _nightmares are supposed to stay in the night where they belong, dammit_ – but the Link who'd put a sword through Ganon's ribcage was oddly un-phased. If his shadow wanted to get up and kill him for no good reason (or perhaps a good one, he had no idea for certain) then he supposed they were entitled to do that.

Didn't make fighting him any easier, though.

"You're losing," said the shadow cheerfully. His giggle was an awful occidental distortion of his own laughter, cracked with age-old madness. "It doesn't matter if you can see the now. It doesn't matter what wild magic is in your blood. Give up. Give up so I can _kill you_!"

Which was a rather absurd proposal.

He felt compelled to ignore it.

Link feinted right then sliced up left, but his opponent foresaw the attack and was already dive-rolling, somersaulting beneath the blow, under his arm and – because Link's seen this move before, killed with this move before – he twisted sideways to avoid the slicing uppercut that swept up from behind. As he dodged, the black swordsman leapt up and pivoted into an immediate and familiar whirl, lithe ebon form suddenly violently in rotation and – because there's only a couple ways to penetrate the reckless attack – Link slide tackles the bastard.

The other swordsman grunted, startled apparently by the counter, but not so startled he doesn't catch the slashing strike Link punched up from the ground at his midriff, stopping it on the edge of his own dark weapon. One vicious kick slammed Link back into the base of a tree trunk. Their cross-guards locked and for the first time in the fight, both combatants were face to face.

And this was horrifying because he doesn't have a face.

And this was horrifying because Link knew if he'd had one, it would be his own.

"You're more reckless than the first one," remarked the murky swordsman, his mouth indiscernible from the void of his features. "It's your eyes. People tell you that a lot, don't they?" He drove his full weight down on the Ordonian trying to shove the hero's own blade back through his throat. Slowly, gently, he leaned close to breath, "But I'm afraid that's not quite enough."

Link heaved up, arms screaming and twisting, he turned the force of his opponent off him. The blade bit into the mail of his shoulder anyway. He rolled, swiping the finishing blow off course and he lunged up past the other man's sword, into his open guard and drove a merciless stab into…nothing.

_Tup_!

Link froze; froze because that fey monster was _standing on the flat of his damn sword _looking down at him. This was disturbing because of all the myriad of sword-wielding wicked things he'd faced up until now, none of them had done _that_ before. Those smoldering eyes crinkled with amusement.

"You're fast," the shadow said gleefully, "but _he_ was a better strategist." And he kicked Link in the face.

Black stars exploded across his multi-colored universe and blitzed ugly monochrome, splattering white and black spots all through his vision and for an instant he doesn't recognize the splatter as blood and the greenery as the canopy and the white as stars (winding and reeling a thousand miles up)! A deadly razor-wind whine and he ducked the throat-slicing swing. A narrow miss, he twisted away from the secondary thrust, though he can't see it so much as feel it – _Move your ass, idiot!_ – before it comes.

Hard parry slammed against his arms, throwing him back, palms ringing with the murderous chord. The shadow was waiting, grinning – Link can't see, again, but feel it: a homicidal jester's jeer. His movements are identical perversions of his own, less recklessly fierce, more murderous, more smooth. Wicked red eyes are set deep in dark sockets. The tell-tale crimson glitter was malice and magic and _hell_ knows what else.

Then his doppelganger bowed (sweeping him the generous head to toe kind of gesture that Zelda never _had_ been able to coax into Link's repertoire) before leaping back into the gloom and dissolving into the darkness.

"Do you know what I am?" came the distorted inquiry, weird and wicked from every dark place. Link pivoted, glaring into a patch of shade near his ankle until the stench of dark dissipated. "Ahh, so you see it? You know the Now very well. I can see _that_, wild one. How must it feel to react _before_, rather than _after_ the fact I wonder? A split second that no man should be so lucky to know."

He brought his blade to bear on that origin of the voice, pin-pointing the husky mumble from some shadow on his right. The blackness in the foliage seemed to slither, annoyed at being found, an oily slide that only the blue-eyed beast could hear, but the Hero of Twilight seemed determined to detect anyway.

"A different magic in you. Raw-er stuff than what the goddesses gave _him_ and you've earned yours." There was a dangerous rest beat in the singsong of his voice, a taunt length of silence stretching tight in the darkness. "Tricksy," he whined in the shadows. "Tricky, tricksy then, the both of you. Tricky, tenacious little things, the both of you. Blue-eyed _puppets_, the both of you! Play cats-paw for the gods!"

Link spun and lashed out, blade slamming into the body he'd felt heave up and out the darkness to his left. A hiss, then impact. His blade phased through insubstantial ribs – _he's partially smoke when he's shifting out of shadows_ – before shocking into some solid thing inside. The doppelganger's scream is eerie because, in pain at least, the both of them sound exactly the same. The shock of that scream froze the Ordonian and black hands grabbed his own, pinning them around the hilt of his sword. The shadow was grinning.

Blade lodged in his ribs, just south of his heart, grinning.

He leaned down into his captive's face, so close it could be intimate, so malicious it could be murder, and when he breathed they were sharing the same air, charged with something like dread (Link's) and mania (his).

"I'm afraid," he said madly, lips almost brushing – _but not quite doing so, gods, not quite_ – his, "that this blade…is not the blade…that you can kill me with."

About then Ordonian realized the last minutes have been a charade. It's a charade and he should be praying or swearing or something…something profound because the blade is in too deep. A killing blow, a lethal blow, a blow his arms have memorized over countless days of swinging. If the doppelganger was not dead, then it was not for lack of skill on the part of the bearer…but inadequacy of the weapon. The shadow couldn't be killed by his hand. The charade: that he thought he could.

Link slammed his boot against the tree trunk and launched himself back, tearing his hands free and losing the blade (it was in too deep after all, he hadn't been able to get the Master Sword out of Ganon by himself). Then he was running, because every wolf knows when to run and the instincts still lingering in his lupine soul know that running is advisable at this point. But the ancient hero in him, that abstract ghost in the shell, whispered: _But running's not something we know very well is it?_

Then the dark Link rose up in the path ahead, surging up out of the shadows of a cedar tree like a man climbing out of a shallow pond. Obliquely Link found himself thinking of Midna, flipping out of his silhouette like it were the most natural thing in the world. Part of him had always enjoyed watching her do it, because it ensnared the eyes and befuddled your perceptions. It was fun.

It was _not_ fun. It was _horrifying_.

The shadow thing attacked again, smoky blade swinging. Link ducked and skidded – _going too fast to stop_ – and, using his momentum, hurled himself sideways on all fours – _execution-style overhand, messy, brutal. He's not giving me any credit_ – and out of the kill zone. He ran on.

"Instinct and impulse!" yelled the shadow at his back. "A wolf's say-so won't save you Hero! You're not enough a hero to stop me. Not even the real hero was enough a hero to stop me!"

Part of him was pulling him back toward the road, toward the waiting Hylian merchants and Ashei (brave knightly Ashei) with her array of useless weapons that wouldn't kill this monster. A guilty wolfish part of him didn't want to die alone, like no pack animal wants to die alone. But being human, he plunged deeper into the woods instead. _Don't follow Ashei._ Through sheer will power he would make it so._ You've got to get to Castle Town by the end of market. Be impatient today. Just go –_

A hand shot out of the dark at his ankle, ripping his footing out from under him and he slammed down hard on his remaining knee, an explosive burst of pain jagging up the bone. He cried out reflexively, grabbed his leg, gasping – then substantial cold settled against his throat.

The cold, it turned out, was steel.

The dark-thing solidified over him, boots planted on either side of him, blade on his neck. He can't help the fast shallowness of his breathing anymore, the shake in his hands, dug into the grass at his sides. There was a furious, frightened tremor in the boy's breathing, raw and rapid in the darkness. The shadow bent down to speak levelly to the ranch-hand. His red eyes narrowed in the black.

"You shouldn't run like that." Long fingers seized the front of his tunic, yanking him with a vicious jerk. (This close the sickly ozone stink of Dark Magic makes his eyes water.) The shadow pressed his mouth into his captive's ear, making sure his complaint was heard, hissing, "It's _rude_, Link," he said maliciously. "It's childish. Don't act like a _child_, it's an insult to us, understand?" He threw the hero down again.

If you squinted, Link was pretty certain you could make out the skull fractures where this thing's sanity had leaked out.

The shadow lowered himself down on the fallen hero, the razor edge of his weapon never leaving the throat of his lighter-half, until he'd settled comfortably on his knees, kneeling astride his chest. _This is familiar,_ Link realized blankly, the shadow's free hand pressed into the soft moss by his left ear (his opponent was right-handed, he noticed.)

The shadow thing got sweet suddenly, tone perversely supplicate. "You'll start acting properly, won't you?"

He spat in the featureless face, more because it was the thing to do (and because his arms were pinned) than anything else.

The shadow sat back, wiping the spittle away. "I see why she wanted _you_," he drawled, conversational but for the _slight_ undertone of murderous psychosis in the playful words. "But the whore doesn't know what you are, I think." He bent down; free hand brushing ragged hair from the boy's forehead. It seemed dumb to flinch at something like that, but his breath hitched anyway. "I could make you a wolf again, Hero. For just a minute, of course, but you could die knowing you weren't trapped in some two-legger's body."

An erratic twinge of desire needled through him. He swallowed it in a panic and irrationally hated that twinge, be it part of him or not, then hated the shadow, because that was _his_ guilty craving and no one else's. His skin burned, cheated, and he didn't care. But it didn't matter; the shadow seemed to have forgotten he'd made the offer at all.

"Been waiting for a long time," said the dark hero soothingly (the edge of the sword scraped his throat in worrisome manner), "to kill you." He whispered, "Are you ready?"

Link swallowed once and then:

"Behind you," the Ordonian said softly. It was a voice, you could tell, unaccustomed to saying anything.

The shadow blinked visibly.

"What –"

_Sh-thuck_!

Something exploded out gap between trees with a flash and the dark-thing grunted, like someone had hit him with a handball. Then he made a low keening sound, the same noise Link made in the back of his throat when hurt. And he _was_ hurt: a glistening white-gold shaft was punched through his breast bone, the tapered arrowhead standing clear of his chest by three inches, throbbing soft yellow Light. It steamed in its new lodgings, eating away merrily through the shadow's murky body. The shadow whimpered, hunched around the hurt, trying unsuccessfully to pull it free and screaming as even touching it blistered his ebon fingers.

Link could hear him gasping. "Not yet…I'm not…yet…"

He didn't bleed – Link was unsurprised to find – red. He didn't even bleed black. He bled water, thick and sticky instead of clean. The strength went out of him in heaving paroxysm, long twitchy convulsions that looked absolutely painful and then doppelganger went limp then and toppled neatly into the grass. The body promptly burst into a gush of grayish liquid, popping like a steamy bubble and soaking into the darkness, evaporating with a small oily waft of ozone flavored smoke.

"Cheh," snorted someone scornfully.

The same someone tossed Link his bow (borrowed apparently from the back of the last wagon) and he caught it reflexively. Where he'd come from exactly ('Behind you' had been a guess) Link couldn't say. Where he'd acquired Light Arrows, however, (there being only one benefactor of such dangerous, pretty things) he could hazard a guess.

He wore a mask and clothes the Ordonian had never seen: dark cloth that fell freely about quick legs, his tunic extending down to thin wrists and bound there by lengths of dirty gray wrapping. His hair shone pale blond even in the dark, hanging messily into his eyes. This close, the scent of arid desert heat, bone-dry air and sand overpowered any other smell in the immediate area.

He glanced at his downed charge, eyes alien ruby red. After a moment he remarked, "You're much shorter than I imagined."

Link figured things could only get worse from there.

_-gossip-_

_**Author's Note: **__Ha! I wrote some action at last! I am fulfilled. Okay, I'm lying, but at least I got to write a bit of the Shadow. Plot may actually evolve from the primordial ooze that is this first batch of chapters. Again, feedback is always appreciated. I have no idea if I write crazy half as well as I think I write crazy. I think I just like writing crazy, because it is fun, therefore, I write crazy people. _

_I couldn't bring myself to delete the Midna/Link anecdote in the beginning. I wrote it just to get my creativity going, but I got so comfy with it floating up there I decided to leave it. Easter eggs! Enjoy!_

_Thanks again for reading. Reviews make my heart get fluttery. _


	8. Suspicion

Suspicion

_To each her own, the goddesses three. _

_Wisdom to pride. Courage to wrath. Power to lust._

_The goddesses thrice, each to her own vice. _

_- Trickster's Lullaby (Sheikah Lore)_

Sheik didn't, apparently, have any patience for explanations; nor, apparently, any patience for anything whatsoever. As one may surmise, this came across as something of a small frustration to Link, who – having been given ample time to ponder it – had developed some pressing questions that wanted answering, in lengthy detail if possible. Though the young hero wasn't naturally inclined to be wordy, the temptation to reiterate his question for the eighth – _eighth_! – time was an astoundingly acute one.

_Who the _hell_ are you and _why_ are we riding into the desert?_

"If I had time to explain these things, cheh, I would certainly do that, Hero, but as it is the need to move is very, very urgent," he explained calmly after Link had expressed his…irritation. "Having said this, would you _please_ move faster or is that _enormous_ load of a horse incapable?"

Epona's head reared back immediately and the mare shot the man a look expressing that she thought Sheik was a very impertinent villain indeed and that she intended to bite a chunk off him later. Most certainly a chunk he would miss. In the mean time Link sighed to himself and kicked her into a more suitable gallop, her heavy hooves thundering into a quicker allegro as they plunged out across the unfamiliar yellow dunes. They'd been riding most of the day and though Epona was a sturdy horse, the heat was palpable, if hot had a taste, this was it. Sheik himself rode a very small calico colored mare with a smart look about her eyes and a nimbleness about her hooves.

Link knew without touching her she was wary thing and would certainly bite anything so bold to touch her besides her strange blond master. Unlike Epona and her young rider, neither of them were even slightly bothered by the open burn of the high noon sun nor the lethal scorching of the heat off the white-hot sand. It didn't help any that they rode all night through the mountains, through crags, through labyrinths of narrow stone allies they only scarcely got through – _"What good it is, seer? You think you can run fast enough?" _– before sunrise.

The memory of the prior night was perhaps the only thin uncertainty that kept Link at Sheik's side (Link wasn't very fond of him, really) because despite everything, Sheik seemed to at least know what he was doing while Link absolutely did not. It was an unbearable feeling and one he was unaccustomed to; partially because all previous instances where he didn't know what to do, it was reasonably certain no one else would either and he simply had to figure things out for himself. Besides necessity, Link was unaccustomed to…not knowing what to do.

It would never occur to the ranch-hand to call himself smart, but he wasn't without mental resources nonetheless.

Though Midna told him otherwise on a regular basis and though he'd received very little real schooling (that Link could read common Hylian only and didn't comprehend the Nayruean Theorem had always horrified Shad) he'd rarely been too held-up by all the puzzles of his travels and very rarely been at a loss for means to kill something. Little as he liked it, Link was very, very capable when it came to the art of killing things. Midna only sometimes had to help him when killing things. To have found something he was incapable of killing…

Well, Link could admit it was a different kind of frightening.

All the long night prior, the Shadow had chased them through the darkness of the mountain passes, dogging their progress in pitch-black gullies where several times he'd lunged out of the gloom and dragged Link yelling off Epona's back. Sheik shot him several times, twice only seconds before the monster put his blade through the Ordonian's throat. The man never once paused an iota to let him recover from each assault, each time screaming un-lucid profanities in another language, subverting back to Hylian only to call him a 'dithering idiot' and confide to the young man he had 'no instincts whatsoever' and to 'get back on that wide-load you call a horse!'.

Link longed to tell him if he had 'no instincts' then the Shadow would have taken his head off no less than twenty-eight different times during the course of the night. The other seven – the ones Sheik belittled him about – were simply a fluke of exhaustion. The Light Arrows – while causing the Shadow unseemly volumes of agony – never stopped him for very long and over and over, tirelessly he came. Link supposed being insane helped him overcome any fear of the debilitating weapons and again he would come, crawling out of the dark, eyes hell-bright, feverish with blood-lust and every inch as dangerous as Link ever could be.

_That_, that self reflection, scared Link more than dying by the Shadow's hand.

"He won't stop," Sheik remarked suddenly, breaking the silence at random.

Link had been peering over his shoulder into the quavering heat-waves on the horizon. He looked back to Sheik now, the masked man having turned in the saddle to face him part-way, his strange eyes brighter still in the glare of the desert sun. It seemed he didn't need his mouth to express whatever emotion it was he required; each color and texture of his mood coming through in the scarlet neon of his gaze. Currently, there was something like sympathy and something like cruelty in his stare.

"He'll keep coming until one of you is dead," he continued neutrally. Sheik's eyes moved away into the rolling gold hills. "As things now stand, it will most likely be you."

"Why?" The sound of his own voice was that of a tired stranger. He didn't recognize it.

Sheik looked up. "You don't have the sword, Hero. Why you replaced it in the Temple of Time, I shall never understand but whatever role you were playacting has cost you the only chance you ever stood of facing the Shadow on even footing. _Lo'thi!_ He would have killed you last night if not for these Light Arrows. You've no Light of your own without that blade. The Master Sword is what marks you as the Hero and you tossed it away as if the world would never see darkness again."

Link didn't quite blanch, but the bluntness of the harsh critique was enough to subvert his eyes from the other man for an instant of frustration (and somewhere deeper, something like shame.)

They didn't speak again for a while. Though Sheik had not in actually _mentioned_ the Princess by name, it was very obvious that one way or another he'd obtained both the Light Arrows and permission to find Link from the new Queen and was fully capable of utilizing the heavily magic laden shafts. Zelda had never seen fit to pursue him after their last – and admittedly unfavorable – parting, so that she'd seen fit to send a keeper now startled the young Ordonian to no end. Either she'd been keeping watch over him unbeknownst to him (an unlikely thing, as Midna had well taught him how to hide himself) or Sheik had been aiming to find him previously.

(And again that would be a feat in execution. Link had been tedious in his efforts to hide whatever traces of him could be traced in his travels – a ritual tribute to one of the many marks Midna had left on him. Zant had been a wizard after all and it was only sensible for a sorceress to gift her charge with lessons in concealment. If Sheik had, indeed, been tracking him through magical means then it meant that he possessed generous magical resources to draw upon...or perhaps Link was more an amateur than he realized.)

Either way, Link didn't have to wield magic to know magic when he saw it…or rather smelled it.

And he smelled it heavily on Sheik.

The man had a similar electric tang to him that Zelda did, that Midna did, that Zant did and Ganon did until his last moments. It was a tang that clung close to the skin, hiding in the blood itself and leaking into the air around them like evaporating lemon water. There was another odor too…like something spicy, or sweet…and strangely _old_: A personal scent private only to Sheik. Link resisted the urge to wrinkle his nose. He'd never met someone who…smelled so much, actually. Sheik's was a smell that one could never fully forget, much like Midna's.

Besides the Queen, Link wondered very keenly if he should go on trusting someone who so clearly despised something about him. What or why he took a dislike to him, Link couldn't say, but it was very clearly there in every nuance of his eyes and every ribbon of scent. Even now, some fifty meters ahead, Link could catch a tracery of that contempt in the other man, a smell he'd grown sharply familiar with in the company of Hyrule's gentry.

"You'd best ask," said Sheik suddenly.

Link came abruptly from his thoughts, looking up.

Sheik turned slightly. "You've got a question, right? If you don't ask it, you'll just be sullen later. So go ahead and ask, cheh. We've got some time just now."

The young hero shifted in the saddle, unsettled by the clarity in those red eyes, but asked his question. "Who are you?"

"Ha!" The taller blonde shook his head hopelessly. "That's not the right question, but I'll give you the answer nevertheless. Sheik is both my name and my namesake. I don't suppose there's much talk of the Lost People in your neck of Hyrule?" He waited for Link's negative shake of the head. "Maa, the proper name is Sheikah. Old Hylian for 'those who See'. They were my people, killed off during the Great Wars in a final effort to protect the Royal Family of Hyrule, cheh, and since then broke ties with the line of kings to die in obscurity."

He bowed mockingly from the saddle. "I am their last living member, _mala_? I thank the Princess' family for that."

There must have been some reproach in Link's eyes because Sheik chuckled and added.

"Yes. I've no loyalty to her particularly, but I have other loyalties I hold to. _Those_ are the loyalties you should be inquiring after, cheh because those are the loyalties that keep me caring about the present length of your lifeline. If you want to know if I'm worth trusting, look at those." He stretched languidly, lazy all of a sudden after so much urgency earlier in the day. "But I've already spoken too much. There's a long journey ahead and I want to know exactly who it is I'm traveling with, unwilling task or not."

Link lifted wary eyes. "Why?"

Sheik seemed to smile bitterly. "So I know exactly who it is I'm betraying."

The words sent an aching bolt through Link and he nearly reined Epona to a stop. The momentary fright passed however and reason reasserted control. The words had come so candidly that the Ordonian realized Sheik couldn't mean them, though the sentiment rang true in his ears. Sheik, perhaps sensing the unease, waved his hand dismissively about his head.

"Maa, it's an old Sheikah tale," he said idly. "Two men meet and choose to travel together across the Sea of Sand; one man is a thief and plans to murder the other. However the thief is careless and the other man discovers his plan. To deter him, the traveler shares his life with the thief so that, at the end of the tale, the thief cannot bring himself to kill the honest man because he knows too well who he is betraying."

Link smiled a little. "Ashei told me a similar story," he said quietly, almost aggressively. "But the moral is reversed."

"The thief kills the man _because_ he knows who he's betraying," Sheik annotated. He accepted this coolly. "Perhaps her story is more true."

The young hero rubbed his aching neck tiredly, too anxious to hide his exhaustion, seeing no point if the other man so clearly took in the world around him. He knew little of the Sheikah race besides the bedtime tales, but he knew something of seers as Midna had been generous with her 'vast' knowledge of things magical, mysterious or interesting in general. She'd filled many a long night with arduous renditions of Twili lore and – by nature – Twili lore was steeped in sorcery, so much so as to be unavoidable. So Link knew what he was talking about when he asked his next question.

"Someone told me…a seer cannot lie."

Sheik looked at him sharply. "And who told you this?"

Link didn't answer.

After a moment, he replied, "It's true." He sounded just slightly unsettled. "A seer cannot lie."

"Are you a seer?"

Sheik smirked and his eyes were bitter. "Yes."

"And you cannot lie?"

"No."

Link leaned back in his saddle and said softly 'ah' as if he's suspected so all along.

"So you won't question me when I tell you something, because whatever I say is true." (Link thought he sounded a little annoyed at being found out.) "For example, that Shadow that nearly killed you several times last night. Quite literally he's the shadow of the ancient hero," the Sheikah said easily, switching topics without apprehension. "You are the awakened incarnate of that same hero. The hero he was meant to kill. It's been a hundred years, cheh. I suspect he's completely insane at this point and most Shadows are distinctly mad to begin with, so he won't distinguish one Hero from another…or won't care if he can."

A flicker of curiosity alighted behind those glass-clear eyes and the Ordonian leaned forward a bit.

"You want to know about him, the first Hero." Sheik shrugged a slender shoulder, as if too lazy to go on. "Shaa…a tale for another time, cheh. I'm afraid we've got to hurry again. I let pause to give you and that giant monster a rest, but if you're refreshed we should go on. It's best if we reach the Sea of Sand by nightfall. If we are fortunate, cheh, we'll proceed un-harried and be done in a few days' travel." Sheik glanced at Link and recognized the dubious expression. He amended. "But chances we'll be harassed every step of the way and be driven half-mad if we don't die outright."

Link was oddly comforted by this. After all, that sounded exactly like most of his previous adventures up to date.

"Why," (Link paused, realizing there was no short way to say this.) "Why didn't we return to Ordonna? To get the Master Sword?"

Sheik sighed. "Why would we?"

"You said –"

"I said the Master Sword was the only way to battle the One Unnamed on even ground, cheh. I did not say it could kill him, because it cannot and it could not a hundred years before and it cannot now," said Sheik very sharply to the younger man. "It can destroy his physical form utterly and send his obliterated consciousness back to the Dark, but I assure you while that is the _closest_ you can come to killing him, that's not killing him." The blonde seer turned forward again, looking into the gold horizon. "There is something more to be done, Link. Do you understand that?"

Link didn't answer.

"_Mala_?"

"I understand," the ranch-hand said angrily, furiously, baffled because it seemed part of him at least really _did_ understand. Some lingering breath of an old swordsman still in him yet, was smelling hot acrid air so thick with sand it clotted the eyes and grated the flesh from exposed limbs. He knew by proxy (through some unknowable inter-planar level of consciousness…or insanity, insanity was always a reasonable option lately) exactly where it was they were going and that Sheik was, indeed, going the right direction.

He just wasn't entirely clear where that direction would take them.

Sheik didn't answer; he just kicked his mare into a gallop, forcing Link to follow him in a wordless trail of dust.

-_lore_-

"I don't trust him, Howll."

The male Twili looked up from the plate of unappealing flatbreads he was picking off of – she hadn't developed an appetite in days – and regarded his companion with something like annoyance. Or, at least, Midna thought it was annoyance…that could be merely recalcitrant…or hungry. He could be hungry.

Howll had a way of looking at people in a manner that made it difficult to determine just exactly what it was he was feeling toward them presently. This was a useful talent to have when one is woefully more intelligent than the high-bred nobles around you and you desperately need to hide the sneer conquering your facial expression. It was this same talent that sometimes made her really wonder how the third son of record-keeper (given, a very neat and accurate record-keeper) could ever in a million planes of existence turn into Howll.

_Oh well, _thought Midna.

The Princess of Twilight spun in her chair, tossing long legs over the armrest so she could tilt her head back at the dark-skinned Twili beside her. They were alone in the dining hall (because Midna had kicked everyone else out) so there was no one but Howll to reprimand her posture and she ignored his reprimands on instinct. She frown at him, long copper-fire hair dusting the smooth tile under her seat.

"Sheik that is. I really don't trust him at all. I can throw him farther than I trust him, but that's no good because I can throw people pretty damn far, but what I'm trying to say is I don't _know_ him. He's practically a myth." Howll blinked in a slow way to suggest he wanted more of an opinion. "I'm worried that I've sent a stranger to help Link and that's just…irritating._ I_ always help Link. Not other people. Me. I'm the one."

She sat up suddenly.

"Why," she said, enthralled and delighted. "I think I'm _jealous_." She beamed. "I'm jealous," she said again, liking the sound.

Howll sighed. "I don't –"

"Jealous," she interrupted.

He glowered.

"What? No. Go on, I'm interested." She fluttered her eyes prettily. "This is my 'interested' face that I'm currently giving you, my dear Howll. Hurry, it'll be gone in moments."

Howll began again somewhat tersely. "I don't think you've got much choice as far as who you send to help the Hero. From what I can tell, your acolyte is perfectly real. You sent him a letter after all and we've divined that your Hero is _not_ dead, so he must not only be real but reasonably good at…whatever it is that creatures like him do."

"Sheikah."

"Hmm," said Howll, pursing thin gray lips. "There may be records of their kind, but I've heard little. Only that among all the races of Hyrule, our people viewed them as the most innately magical. During the Great Wars the Sheikah pitted themselves against our tribe and were very much up to the challenge of contending with us; more so, say some, than the Hylians were."

"You know of them?"

"That, what I just said, is all I know of them, other than their religion."

"That being?"

Howll smiled just a little, a small ironic grin. "Truth."

Midna frowned, reaching across the table to take one of Howl's flat-loaves. "The _Eye_ of Truth?" She took a bite. "Hmm, what kind of power can you gain paying homage to a being specializing in Truth? At least the goddesses offer character improvements: bravery, intelligence, power. What good is being truthful, besides the obvious and lucrative career as the local sucker?"

Howll looked angry and opened his mouth (she already knew what was coming out of it; she just liked to get him out of his seat.) She quickly gestured him back down, hands fluttering in his direction.

"I know! For heaven's sake, Howll, I _know_. Honestly you behave as though I didn't have the best and most tedious tutors the Twili have to offer for a majority of my horrendous childhood. Gods and goddesses," she said epiphany in her voice. She swallowed the mouthful of bread and spun on her companion, eagerness in her sun-rise eyes. "I should have every one of them strung up by their _toes_! Do they still do that, Howll? String people by their toes? Is that fashionable anymore?"

"Seeing how most Twili are in possession of levitation skills…no, not really," said Howll.

The young Twili made a face. "Piffle. Anyway, as I was saying. Up until recently, I didn't even know the House of Midnight _had_ an alliance with a member of the Sheikah. I more or less stumbled upon the fact reading through those old historical accountings you gave me, which, by the way, did _not_ help me understand the internal workings of the alliances between the Houses. Thank you very much. But it turns out the first ruler of the Twilight Realm was the one to forged the contract. It's not an alliance between races, oddly enough, just an agreement between the House of Midnight and Sheik himself."

"Peculiar," said Howll. "Has he defected from his race?"

Midna gave him an odd look. "Howll, the Sheikah are several hundred years eradicated. Sheik is the last of their number."

"Hmm," said Howll, then noticed the look. "What now?" snapped the Twili crossly.

"Why is it that I, the _princess_, know more about the history of a Hyrulian race than you, my _advisor_ who is subsequently a member of a long, long line of people whose job it is to…I suppose, _keep_ the histories of those people? If anyone should be telling me things about Sheik, it should be you. This is extraordinary. Has Howll, perfect Howll, been shirking his record-keeping duties? Tut! What would grandpa Howll say?"

If anything, she thought he looked obscurely flattered, but he hid it well with irritation. "Are you quite finished gloating?"

"No give me a minute."

The other Twili could think of nothing to say to that and for a minute they waited while Midna quite literally gloated. When she was finished she went on.

"After I found out about him, there was that whole messy affair of having to meet with him to make it official. My great, great, great grandmother was the one who first met him – walking the line of the Dark Horizon apparently – and she was curious because he was obviously not Twili or darkling-kin so that left her to wonder how a denizen of Light had crossed over. She was curious because the Mirror of Twilight was supposed to be the only road, remember, but Sheik is living _proof_ that there are other paths."

Midna paused, trying to decide if she'd sounded too terribly hungry when she said that last bit. After a moment to work out that, yes, she did sound a shade too ravenous, she went on quickly.

"Anyway, it seems Sheik was reluctant to agree to anything at all, but my gran was a nothing if not persuasive and she managed to win him over with niceties. You know, cakes, cuddles, that kind of thing. I imagine he agreed just to make her get off him." She tried not to let the irony of her words be too obvious.

Howll pushed his plate away, the silvery disk clattering as it crowded a couple other untouched dishes. "Wait…Sheik is _how_ old?"

The young ruler buffed her nails a bit, humming to herself. "Several hundred years at least, our records don't go into any detail of the Sheikah so there's no telling his lifeline, but he looks not a day over twenty. Not that he never took that mask off, but the – ah – _rest_ of him was that of twenty-year-old. So he could be several _thousand_ years old for all we know. You can't tell by looking and it was such an _awkward_ affair what with all the chanting and the dancing naked and the embarrassment afterward when he told me being naked wasn't exactly necessary and – _ha! _You're paying attention _now_ aren't you?

Howll, who hadn't been drifting in the slightest, just glared.

Even as she explained herself, finally brought her actions to some kind of light, there was that creeping sense of doubt. That something did not fit. During her reading, one of the clauses had stated that Sheik was more or less immortal, but said nothing of who he was in all those years of being immortal. She decided not to bring it up. Howll would most likely ask anyway.

She grew momentarily serious. "But all that aside, I decided to meet with him."

"The letters?" The incredulity in his voice could have sodomized the dreams of a million children. "_That_ is how you summon him?"

Midna had the mind to be just a little defensive. "Well, there weren't any _instructions_, now were there? The agreement was to send a summons and he would answer. I can't be sure what kind of 'summons' my archaic ancestor was talking about, so I sent one that made sense and waited." (Howll had his head in his hands, shaking it back and forth. He was muttering something to the affect of 'gods damned postage' and 'inter-dimensional mail'. She ignored him easily.) "When I caught wind of the goings-on in the Dark Realm and in my court…he was my only option. Sheik can cross Realms. I can't."

Howll folded his arms across his gray and black whorled chest, lines of soft hieroglyphic red pulsing gently below his sternum and down his stomach. His words were contemplative. "Then this dalliance was not your first meeting."

She shook her head. "No. My second. That's how I knew to send letters this time and lots of them."

"You've met him then once before?"

Midna was up and pacing by then, waving about indicating various invisible things of interest orbiting her person. Howll was scooting dutifully away from her lest a stray gesture take an eye out.

"Yes. To solidify my contract with him as the new ruler of Twilight. That was nearly two months ago, before I knew of the plot against Link, or that anyone had anything particularly _against_ Link." She tried to keep on task but the tangent seized her. She turned to look blankly at her confidante. "Remind me why no one likes him again? He's very likable. People who don't like him are typically of an unsavory variety. You kind of have to be not to like him. Have I said this before?"

"Yes," said Howll tonelessly. "Sheik. Did he do or say anything that made you uncertain of his loyalties?"

She hesitated. "Well, several…things."

(_The first thing she could think of – after he'd axe-kicked her in the gut, hit her over the head, and started distorting the air with heavy, foreign magic – was that her great-great-grandmother had declined to fill in all the details of this first 'trial meeting'. Sheik _was_ small in stature, red-eyed, dark of skin, pale of hair, all lots of interesting and completely useless details that did nothing to help her when said person was not only _not_ listening to her words of peace, but _pummeling_ her. Midna had been a lot of things in her life, pummeled was not one of them._

"_Shaa…" said the blonde-haired human, voice low and languid as he spun a long needle between his fingers. "Are you fighting, princess or will you stand there and stare at me while I give you bruises?"_

_And because you can't taunt a princess of Twilight without being thoroughly penalized for it – literally, there was a guide-line for such an offense in Twili law, right next to the reprimand for stick one's tongue out at rival Twili House members – Midna found herself grinning her wicked grin and smiling her wicked smile as the magic of her people rose like eventide inside her. She remembered what it used to feel like back when she was cursed and Link was still that feral blue-eyed entity at her side: calling on oceans of such pure, untouched _power._ It used to drive her temporarily into a realm of madness when she used it. _

_Now she reigned over the madness and it was hers to unleash on whom she desired. The liquid-gold of power blossomed at her back, spread its mottled nimbus around her body like wings of dusk and for just a moment there was that lick of madness in her blood that's always been there, but in secret. She lifted her arm and Sheik vanished as a swarm of dappled gold arrows bulleted through the air where he'd just stood. The smoke cleared and the seer was standing to her left, body rippling like a distant image in a heat wave._

_Even from a distance, his aura was stifling._

_Old magic. Older even – dare she imagine – than the power she herself wielded. _

_She didn't wait, she lashed out with her magic and like a hungry feeler; the glowing appendage latched to his arm clung there. He lunged back, startled, but his speed is useless when she has him, the golden mass of her magic boiling eagerly up his elbow, past his shoulder, crawling down his chest as seeking new limbs to capture. Midna's had practice catching quick humans in her nets and experience told her once you catch a limb, it's all but over._

_Then, almost ponderously (like he hadn't done this in ages) the seer raised his own hand, pressed it to the glowing whorls of her magic…_

_And the world swam. _

_Midna staggered, a strange numbness flashing through her body, buzzing up the line of contact and humming behind her eyeballs, ringing in her ears, rattling through her blood. Her own magic reversed on itself, like a towel folding up again, it shrank back, peeling off the other magic-user's arm seemed to coil back inside her: stuffed back deep inside like that same towel being squished and shoved and coerced into a very, very small box and (how the dark hell is his doing that?) the world seemed to change. A vortex of neon and dark and green and gold and spinning down into – _

_And he was suddenly in front of her._

_Sheik punched her seven times, hands thudding into her like a deadly staccato bass-line, three across her collarbone two to the belly, one to the throat and the last to her temple. It floored her instantly and she didn't remember actually see him attack. The stars cleared just in time to catch him land neatly, cat-like, then turn a few lazy flips back toward a safe distance, movements containing more fluidity than she'd seen in whole rivers. He righted himself, tossing pale bangs from those strange and knowing eyes, gazing down at her._

"_Maa…" Sheik seemed to be weighing something in his mind. He waved vaguely, as if trying to pluck a thought that might be floating about his headspace. "I _suppose_ you pass, cheena. But know that your grandmother had to defeat me before I agreed to her terms. I won't press you for proficiency as you've only just acquired your Art. But tell me then, who are you to summon me, cheh?" He sat down, gazing at her with those bright scarlet eyes. "I'd like to know who it is I'm betraying.")_

She pursed her lips.

"More than several actually."

_**Author's Note**_

_Sorry for the delays, but end of the year events got in the way and a slue of new stories pouring in kind of routing this one out for a while. I apologize, but I'm back. Thanks again for all the kind support and helpful hints (and boy did I need the hints). Giddy about some of my new projects I am, but I've not lost interest in my lovely TP ficcy, oh no. I'm rather excited for the next bit. Tee, hee hee! You know what the button is for, chickpeas. Laterz!_


	9. Apples

Apples

"_Yu' know after all that fussin' an' fightin' and savin' tha world,_

_I just kinda thought someone shoulda told 'im 'thank you' or somethin' before 'e left."_

_- An Anthology of Words on Heroes _

_Crunch_! Crunchcrunchcrunch…

"Midna…"

_Crunch_! Crunchcrunchcrunch…

"Midna."

_Crunch_! _Crunch_! Cru –!

"_Midna_."

She pauses, luminous eyes considering him in that familiar dubious way of hers. Her pearly fangs are parted just enough to give him a glimpse of the half-crunched bits of pale apple flesh between her teeth. Her companion is giving her an amazing look, one that she's grown fond of getting on his face because she hasn't met a Twili in the world who can arch one brow like her boy-wolf can; it's practically an art form. They're sitting together beneath a lonely tree in Hyrule Field while Epona grazes some hundred feet off and she's stretched comfortably on a suspended cushion of nothing and he's lying on his back with his head on the slant of his shield.

His single eyebrow is attempting to reach new and lofty heights on his knitted forehead and she watches the wrinkles in there eagerly, enthralled with human expression so like and unlike that of her own race. Then again, she's supposes it could just be the boy himself because while there's never been a Twili with such masterful brow-control, she hasn't seen a human half as expressive as hers. Among his kind, Link is both completely, mutedly opaque and wretchedly, marvelously transparent.

She believes rather that he doesn't speak as a self-defense mechanism – if he spoke, she thinks he wouldn't be able to hide anything. The world would have every inch of him for itself and having already seen the force of him from a one-dimensional persona (hero and animal). The prospect of all of him being exposed is a little intimidating…

Only a little, though, because nothing but a scant few things in this world – and the next – intimidates her and farm-boys are not one of them. At least, not from _this_ angle. She's almost mildly afraid to know him from all angles, lest the whole of her indentured boy-wolf be more than she's willing to be responsible for. Then again, she's determined not to be responsible for anything, much less a spry blue-eyed changeling, regardless of whether or not she blackmailed him into service or if his world's been shattering indirectly by her incompetence as a leader. She's not responsible for him or what happens to him and she never will be.

Thinking about this, she swallows her apple bite. "Yes?" she giggles.

"You're loud," he tells her, blinking.

"No. I'm chewing," she condescends just slightly. "_You're_ just overly sensitive to commonplace and completely mundane sounds. Also, I stole this."

He glares a little and abruptly rolls over; putting his back indifferently to her. But again: what he can't hide in silence is all over him, like a goddess liquefied emotion in a bucket and threw it down this boy like paint. Like the need for communication gave up on his tongue and diverted it's attentions to the rest of his body, so every inch of the ranch-hand trebles with his passions and dispositions, like a struck tuning fork. Anger is a very low, grumbling note to her and he's orchestrating a symphony of it.

"Are you angry?" she asks eagerly.

Link says nothing, but answers anyway when he moves a hand to rake his messy hair from his eyes, shoving it from his face with tell-tale restraint. She already knows he's angry, but she endeavors to get it out of him in a confession, because she likes to wheedle things out of him for no other reason than her own boredom becomes too much to stand and she can't risk that her thoughts might turn to the too-recent past. She pushes him hard because ennui brings silence and in silence there's always an echo of what's already happened, mumbling into the void what she's been drowning out with fighting and monsters and mirror shards.

She hates to hear her own voice rebounding off the emptiness in her: what's, how's, when's, where's and why's. She'd rather not dwell on dark-lit obsidian halls and arching lonely corridors of eventide ambience. On her people arrayed helplessly against her, twisted macabre monsters mutilated by magic so deep it's corrupted them to the core. On her failure. On the gut-wrenching miserable guilt that's been chewing at the inside of her midriff, aching like a rotten tooth, so exquisitely painful she can't help but bite down on it to revel in the bone-deep anguish of it…

Midna blinks.

Link is facing her, having propped himself up on his elbows to look at her. He's frowning.

"What?" she inquires lazily.

He quirks his head just so. It's hard too tell if he's going to say anything, but eventually he sits up properly and says, "You shouldn't steal."

"Oh?" she drawls. "And what magnanimous superior justice told you that?" She's hoping she can drown him in a big word or two.

He simply rolls his wildly blue eyes her way replies. "Not magnanimous. Just polite."

And she's irritated with him for being more literate than a farm boy should be and cuffs him on the shoulder. "It's one apple. No one will know."

He gives her a look that says 'I know' and rolls onto his back again, leaving her annoyed with his lack of reciprocal verbal communications. When he first regained his human form, she'd simply taken his silence as a force of a habit, one stemming from having been deprived of speaking in human tongues for so long. Or maybe he was still pissed at her for being snarky in general. A week later she finally caught on to the unfunny reality that their conversations were going to stay one-way for a good long while.

"Also, I stole a banana," she announces. "But it's been rotting in the bottom of your saddle bag for a few days."

"_Midna_!"

Which is as close to 'gods dammit!' as Link ever gets.

_-anthology-_

It was dark, a phenomenon that had never held any kind of appreciable anxiety to Link previously, but he'd since developed an acute terror for random patches of shadows; thus, night had become a frightening and menacing thing. Sheik had ignited a small fire using a cache of kindling from a small saddle-bag and waving his fingers mysteriously over the lot. Unlike Link he didn't seem concerned about the possibility of the Shadow's approach and had settled down comfortably in the warm glow, stretched out lazily in the sand and humming sleepily to himself.

Link couldn't figure out if this meant he was on watch or if setting up a watch had ever occurred to the peculiar desert-man, either way, he didn't think much of being slain in his sleep so he stayed awake, though sleep was starting to tug insistently at him now, having not slept all night previous and rode through desert heat all day. He folded his arms over his knees and propped his chin on them, peering into the fire and trying to think back to any solitary useful thing Midna might have once said once upon a time about seers, desert magic, shadows or anything at all.

Mostly he thought of apples.

Which was odd unless one knew Midna quite as intimately as he'd come to know her. She'd grown almost unhealthily fond of apples during her time among humans. As a result, he'd paid for enough apples in his adventures to last lifetimes over – though if asked, Midna would assert haughtily it was because of _his_ incorrigible obsession with being honest. That only rankled because he didn't really even _like_ apples.

Sheik, naturally, chose this moment to chuck an apple at his head.

The Ordonian managed to snatch it out of the air before it bounced off his nose, but it didn't really reverse the indignity any so he glared. If the capricious seer even noticed, he was pretending not to. Back to him, he continued rummaging in his pony's saddlebag for another piece of fruit, coming away with three more apples, one of which he tossed more genially to the young swordsman.

"Best eat it tonight. You'll need the water and fruit rots fast in this kind of heat," he explained, producing a long, silver knife from one of his sleeves. He started quartering his apple neatly, popping a crisp wedge from the whole and setting it on his knee while he worked on another one. Link didn't go to such length, simply crunching into his own meal and chewing in decidedly unhappy silence. Sheik looked up at him. "The One Unnamed will have to cross the desert tonight. He may travel through water and reflection at will, cheh, but he must cross through shadow. The desert has no shadows until the night. He's had to wait until now to start out after us. Rest. We've some time."

Link swallowed his mouthful, but his throat felt tight and parched despite. Quietly he looked out across the silvery swells of sand stretched endlessly into the horizon and wondered at the fact _any_ people could survive this far out into what most men likened to hell.

"Tomorrow morning," Sheik continued conversationally, "we must cross the Sea of Sand. It will be…shaa, _difficult_. More so if we are discovered by any of the natives so I advise against stopping until we've crossed. Tomorrow night, the One Unnamed will catch up and if we haven't reached the Colossus, it will be exceedingly difficult to get through the Spirit Temple."

Link lifted a brow at the name. Sheik seemed to smile at that.

"The Spirit Temple is one of the six temples the ancient hero overcame. Spirit, Forest, Fire, Shadow, Light; you've seen the Water Temple, though, somewhat changed since Rutella took over. Her great grandmother actually _knew_ the hero." In the back of his mind, he knew he should be wondering how Shiek knew all this about him, but he noticed instead that somewhere between his looking away and Sheik's story, the apple slices had vanished from the seer's knee. He was currently cutting a new fruit.

"Actually, the whole 'ancient' title is somewhat exaggerated," said the masked man lightly. "The truth is, your predecessor is only a couple generations removed from yours, but infamy is enough to tack on a couple hundred years with story telling, given, only a handful of people were even aware of his existence while he was actively saving the country." He paused thoughtfully. "You know…he grew up in the same providence you did, though it was somewhat more _uncultivated_ back in those days. I'm sure you've never heard of the Kokiri?"

Bemused, he shook his head.

"Shaa, thought not. Maybe it's best. They took to hiding some years ago, had a talk with the Forest Sage and she said 'What good is it to look like children anyway? All it gets you is laughed at and leaves are _very_ fetching when you get down to it,' cheh. But that's beside everything," said Sheik, gesturing with his apple. (Another slice had vanished and Link was finding the method of this acutely distracting. Also, Sheik sounded like he was talking with mouth full now.) "My point is, if I'd had one at all, is that the Spirit Temple will be a place you're familiar with. Don't be afraid to follow your instincts there. I may be desert born, but I don't tread Gerudo grounds given the choice. We're already pushing it, cheh, sneaking around as it is."

Link stiffened at that, pinning his nonchalant companion with a glare. It took the seer a moment to realize he was being accused of anything, and another to figure out what. He was annoyed when he made the connection.

"_Allah'shaa_…" he muttered, "trespassing in Gerudo territory is like trespassing on the _sand_. Their tribal claims extent to all corners of the deep desert, but they can only enforce those claims in the lands they inhabit. They're aren't a terrible lot of them, not since Ganondorf's fall and the ones still living around here are mostly here to tend the Spirit Temple. Warrior priestesses and the like, cheh. Trust me when I say you _don't_ want to get caught and we do _not_ have time to earn a membership. That takes a long time and priestesses are a cantankerous lot and…"

"Membership?" Link repeated.

He blinked ruby eyes owlishly. "Eh? Oh, yes. If you're a man, you can earn a tribal blood rite as a pseudo member of the Gerudo tribe. To earn the rite you best four of their warriors in battle. It's like saying you're woman enough to be part of the club, _mala_?"

"Hmm," said Link, yawning.

"You should sleep. I'll keep watch, cheh." Sheik seemed pleased with himself. The apple was entirely gone now. "On an unrelated snippet of history: the ancient hero _did_ earn that rite."

Link went to sleep trying not to smile.

_-anthology-_

Members of the Hyrulian court, with the exception of perhaps Agatha, were notorious for being very fashionable in all things. In Castle Town Market, the greatest revenues and the most extravagant businesses to seek ones fortune in was the tailoring industry simply because the demand for new and more outlandishly fashionable gowns and suits was booming. That even the Queen knew less about fashion than her courtiers was something of a scandal, but dismissed because Queen Zelda was a prodigy and an enchantress of the highest caliber and if she wanted to wear the same simple, classic cut gown no one was in a position to suggest otherwise.

The ladies of nobility called it a crying shame – 'She would look so charming in one of Bareel Dinn's designs, don't you think?' – but then again, Zelda was a genius. She couldn't help it if her intelligence allowed for little and no frivolities and she couldn't help it if she didn't care for the opinions of her court tailor and she _couldn't_ help it if she'd tried a Bareel Dinn dress once before – in bravery – only to have her errant knight-to-be fall down laughing hysterically. (Link only laughed harder when, irately, she explained it was all the rage in Castle Town and she had the dress stitched into a very ugly table-cloth. She mailed it to him and heard it was making a fine saddle blanket some where in Ordon.)

That particular dress design had been banned utterly only days later. This was Zelda's only eccentric law and coincidentally many court women missed their favorite gown acutely.

Anyway, it was popular to arrive fashionably late to any and all events – the result of which being the Queen having to schedule everything hours earlier than she intended. So, it was _decidedly_ odd when almost every single member of the court arrived on time for the court marshal of Sir Ashei of Peak Pass. The Queen even arranged the hearing to take place in the early morning in hopes of diverting interest, but didn't matter. Ladies who slept in late as two in the afternoon, rose at dawn to bathe and freshen up their best gowns. Knights canceled hunting expeditions and arrived in droves to get a good place in the throne room. Very few came with the intention of being supportive.

Ashei hadn't even washed the blood off her armor. The gore had dried on her pale skin like dirt and she looked less like a knight so much as a scruffy street-urchin. Her stomping in had kicked the red carpet crooked beneath her muddy feet, scarlet and plushy and now in need of a cleaning. Feet planted, eyes burning, the young woman looked so infallibly proud, however, no one in the room could deny she _knew_ she was a knight. For how much longer, she couldn't know, but right then. She was nobility.

"I don't know what happened," said Ashei flatly. "It happened too quickly, yeah. There was never a warning, a sign, nothing."

"Sir Ashei," the man by the throne addressed her stiffly. Behind him Zelda was seated, gloved hands folded not-so-lightly in her lap. Pink lips pursed. "Is it not true that Link of Ordon was in your company during your return? Where was he during your…battle?"

The mountaineer's dark eyes flashed somnolently, defiant despite her obvious exhaustion. She hadn't slept all night, Zelda knew, because she and the smoldering remains of the merchant band had straggled in only hours before dawn. A ten-wagon train had been obliterated to four, two of which carried wounded, each one showing signs of severe fire damage, the cargo charred, soot and ash covering each person from head to toe.

"Sir Ashei," the man repeated tersely, fingers tucked importantly in the lapels of his suit. "Kindly answer."

The man addressing her was a lawyer.

The court marshal had been declared after Theo Bather, the head merchant, sued for the damages, charging that Link and Ashei had been irresponsible in their duties to protect them and that the Queen had been negligent in sending them and them alone to protect them. It had come into the lime-light had Link was _not_ under Royal commission to escort the train and – hero or not – was not officially on the Queen's payroll and could not be held liable as soldier. He was a volunteer and could not, therefore, be sued. Unfortunately, this left Ashei to take the brunt of what was looking to be very messy lawsuit.

Usually, such a trial was a public affair to be handled in the lower merchant courts, knight or no knight, matters of damages and reparations were a civilian affair and not something officially requiring the attentions of the Queen. However, the nature of the charges being brought against Ashei and the nature of the situation called for Zelda herself to be present as witness. This was no matter of misplaced cargo – There were five dead: caught in the flames when the wagon of imported cannon powder caught flame and exploded, taking the head off a merchant's wife, the arm off a child, and incinerating the other three.

This didn't seem to faze her, however; her express concerns the night previous had been entirely revolving Link's disappearance. Obviously to take off and not return was odd, odder still not to return when it had been so obvious strange things were afoot – shadows, nightmares, wolves and wicked goosebumps. Link had confided to Ashei he'd only felt such presences once before, in the Arbiter's Grounds. He suspected some kind of dark entity. The mountaineer had been inclined to agree, having traveled those craggy roads before and never once having sensed such a sinister presence.

"Lady Ashei?" the man repeated, switching titles hopefully.

Ashei answered, albeit, sounding like she would enjoy punching the bespectacled lawman. "He was chasing a rogue mare, yeah. The horses were skittish. That was the third one that day."

"Many members of the wagon train made claims that something was disturbing them at night. A rogue spirit on the road perhaps, something else? Is it true something lured your Ordonian comrade into a blizzard? Enchanted him somehow? Some children were even tempted to leave the wagons?"

"I don't know about any spirits, but there was something spooking the horses and, yeah, something was trying to lure people off."

"Do you think your companion from Ordon was caught by such a spell?"

"No."

"But he didn't return to help?"

"No."

"But you _did_ manage to see the attacker?"

"Yeah."

"Can you describe the attacker?"

"No."

"Not at all?"

"Not really."

"Can you _attempt_ to, simply to humor a foolish man?"

The young knight shifted restlessly, fingers curling and uncurling at her hip in want of a blade. "He moved too _fast_, yeah. I only caught him running out of the last wagon before it went up." She spoke with irately ingrained defiance in every word. "It was dusk, almost dark and the other carts were on fire. I couldn't chase him and save the carts at once, yeah."

"One of the women claimed he was Hylian," the man ventured.

"I couldn't confirm that," Ashei said coldly.

"Her exact words were 'A young man of diminutive stature, blonde, wearing dark clothes' and she claimed she saw him make off with your companion's bow and quiver." Murmurs circulated through the crowd and pink of Zelda's mouth vanished completely as her lips pursed more prominently together. Ashei was looking visibly taunt. "In your own statement to the men, you said the damage to the wagons appears to have been the work of someone familiar with the use of explosives. You said fire-seed lantern oil had been splashed across the main cargo wagons. Is it not true Link carried Kakariko-made bombs? Is it not true fire-seed is local to the Ordonna Province alone?"

"Are you tryin' t' imply something, _sir_?" snapped Ashei, every line in her lean figure becoming rigid. "Because it sounds a whole _hell_ of a lot like you tryin' to accuse Link of killing women and children, _yeah_."

Scandalous burbling broke out through the collection of nobility, court scribes were scribbling furiously, one getting so excited he stabbed himself with his quill and bled all over the fine paper. Elegant fans fluttered about the faces of shocked noble women, knights looked on in surly contemplation, and several people representing the city's upper-middle class exchanged anxious looks.

Zelda gave the lawman credit, he didn't become either offended or defensive, merely coolly restated, "I would not make such a claim. I am simply hoping to avert a second tragedy to the one that has already occurred. It would be horrendous to send an innocent to prison for the crimes of another. I am trying to help you, Lady Ashei."

"By accusing Link."

"Can you be sure it was not him?"

"Link was chasing a mare. He was _gone_."

"Can you nominate another suspect? That would be most helpful no one wants to accuse the innocent of crime less than I."

"Bandits," spat Ashei. Mounting heat in her eyes. "Mountain thieves."

"But they stole nothing. He was one man – come and gone so quickly that even you, an expert mountaineer and member of the Queen's own circle of knights, could not catch even a glimpse of him," the man said, wrinkles forming in his brow. "That sounds like a man of extraordinary skill. Would you deny you companion had the know-how to do such a thing?"

"_Yes_!" shouted Ashei recklessly, "because Link doesn't know how to kill innocent people!"

"That was not my question," the man said calmly. "I would like to know, if your companion had the skill to orchestrate the conflagration of –,"

"His name is not 'my companion'!" she bit out, teeth flashing angrily.

"Sir, Ashei, control yourself –,"

"The Goddesses burn your balls!"

More scandalous muttering.

"I call the proceedings to recess," Zelda said at last. If anyone had been really listening to her, they might have heard the slightest treble in her typically impassive voice. As it was, no one heard it but herself.

-anthology-

Link woke to the sound of Sheik swearing. This wasn't necessarily an unpleasant sound - even when Sheik was spewing filth, the canter of his language lent his words an almost melodic quality. However, profanity in desert-tongue wasn't what woke him, rather, a sudden jolt of absolute _knowing_ was what ripped him rudely from his dreams and he lunged instinctively sideways. A split-second later – Sheik's Hylian scream of "Look out!" ringing in the air, a black blade thudding strongly into the sand where his head had just been – he realized exactly what it was he so strongly knew:

The Shadow was back.

Link rolled to his feet, blade humming as it came free of its sheathe and he watched his own shadow seethe and peel away from him. At his back he felt Sheik move into position at his left, sliding several silver-looking something's from the wrappings at his wrists and another from the tightly bound thigh-holster just above his knee. Distinctly the Ordonian heard him make a loosely concerned noise in the back of his throat. The affect was that of a man having just whacked his head on the lintel of a low-hanging door and Link became immediately apprehensive.

Sinking down in the sand, he picked up his bow from the ground, digging the wound length of bowstring from his belt.

"Hurry up," said Sheik with unnatural calm. "You'll need that sorely in the next few moments."

Link glared, bracing the unstrung bow against the ground and strung it quickly.

His new companion leaned around him. "That's the idea," he said vaguely, "if I could just borrow your patience a spell…" He reached past his shoulder to touch the curve of the polished fairy-wood, a faint gold sheen effusing through the weapon and fading. Link's fingers warmed, tingling familiarly. The other man drew back. "The spell's in place, cheh. But…hmm…" He made that some-what-but-not-really concerned sound again. "There's this slight complication…" Link became somewhat alarmed.

"The Light Arrows?" he asked serenely as he could manage. The seer made another muffled sound, absurdly embarrassed this time.

"Complication," he repeated. Link stared at him and red eyes darted apologetically toward the young ranch-hand. "Not one of the higher-percentage Paths. He's between us and the horses..." There was an awkward pause. "The arrows are still in The Giant's saddle bags."

Link shot him an _unbelievable_ look. The darkling was stalking toward them, arms swinging from hunched shoulders in a manner not unlike the rigor mortis stagger of a Redead. Sheik seemed apprehensive about this because he didn't immediately attack, rather bid Link back up. The young swordsman gave him look at that suggested Sheik might not be his most favorite person and obeyed, wishing he hadn't left his shield buried in the back of a wagon in Lanayru. Behind their enemy, Sheik's mare, Kali, was dancing and whinnying, Epona with her.

The Shadow lifted his head slowly, in increments, like a broken marionette and moonlight glistened on the slick black of bared teeth, deep eyes still smoldering with red insanity. "Found you!" he crowed, gleefully psychotic. Then he hopped backward, like a kid jumping backward off a dock into a swimming hole, and vanished into the ocean of desert shadows. For a moment there was nothing but the sound of crackling fire and the nervous nickering of the horses who seemed very happy as far away from the shadow as they could get.

"Now what?" Link inquired softly.

"Meh…" Sheik shrugged narrow shoulders, gesturing abstractly. "Details and niceties… move a step to your right will you?"

Link did and the seer hurled what looked like one of Ilia's knitting needles into the shadows. It struck true and an instant later the Shadow reared up from the dark, ripping the silvery shard from his shoulder with an infernal hiss. He spat something dark and ugly solely at Sheik, but the addressed merely lowered his head slightly, glaring at the shadow through the soft fringe of his hair.

"Kindly get the arrows," said Sheik casually as you please. He stepped very neatly around Link and put himself between the twin swordsmen. He rolled his shoulders and shook out his arms a bit. "I'll handle this."

Then he settled into a peculiar fighting crouch and waited patiently to begin. Link smelled something sharp in the air again, that magic citrus scent, clashing horribly with the chemical stink of black Art. Sheik seemed unfazed. His bandaged fingers were wrapped comfortably about the hilt of his silver long-knife. Missing a cross-guard, thin as a polished leaf and held at a horizontal angle in front of him, it looked elegantly lethal – simple and bright in his hands. Link felt he knew its uses very well, only one of which was quartering apples.

"_Sheikah_," the darkling enunciated. He tasted the word like one did a sweet, licking the syllables of the roof of his mouth. "Has the whore sent you, then?" he asked in falsely polite tones, circling like a starved black cat. "Sent her dogs to protect her wolf? Shame…I thought your stupid race had learned its lesson about protecting pretty blue-eyed things. But then again suicide runs in the blood, doesn't it, bright-eyes?"

"Maa," shrugged the seer, "you don't really know what you're talking about. Your kind rarely do."

"You can't protect him," condescended the shadow, waggling a black finger. "You can't protect anything properly, you miserable, ancient thing. Why can't you whither and die like the rest of your kind, finally end this pathetic history? Why can't you let someone bleed you out – _get out of my way!_" The shadow exploded forward, dissolving into smoky black and melting into the shadows. Link lunged forward, a warning on his tongue.

But Sheik was quicker.

"_Hup_!" His hand hurled out and something blinding bright burst at his feet, bleaching the dunes bone white, burning bare the shadow out of his murky camouflage. The dark thing howled, reeling back, clawing his face then retreated to the gloom again. Then Sheik was on him; slashing and stabbing viciously at the half-blinded darkling, his weapon nothing but a series of blinking points of light as it caught the moon at the zenith of each silent slice. The desert fighter attacked in a manner Link had never seen before. The blade was not the weapon, only a means by which to kill. Sheik himself was the weapon, darting close for a quick-strike, a single rapid flurry then retreating. Like a cat hitting a poisonous snake.

Sheik leapt back, putting space between them.

Link's counterpart sneered.

"Fey tricks and trinkets won't keep me from him." The shadow stood in a bubbling cloud of black magic, mad fury poisoning the air. "Heh, heh, heh. I'm going to rip him open in front of you, Sheikah. You can tell the whore how he died and then I'll come for her – _ahh_!" The shadow whipped himself away before the blade could find more purchase, clutching his arm and dripping a heavy flow of crystal fluid from nerveless fingertips. Incinerating eyes, hell-gate red in the dark, pinned him, furious and homicidal. "Worthless _thing_!"

Sheik lifted the wetted blade. His eyes glittered bloody merciless. "There is only one Path left for you," he said.

The dark Link snickered. "What? Kill me with those pretty things the princess gave you? Save the Hero for the whore? Do your kind _ever_ get over the habit of doing stupid things for the sake of royalty?"

They darted at each other again, exchanging a metallic flurry of parries and blows. Silvery arcs marked the sweeping, lightening quick slashes, Sheik ducking past an overhead chop and rolling his body – specifically his elbow – into the shadow's face. He staggered. The seer spun, slashed, arms wind-milling one after the other, forcing his opponent back. Then, in an instant, dropped and swept the shadow's legs out from under him. The doppelganger hit the sand and shoved himself sideways, sword flashing up to stop the razor edge of the blonde's assassin blade as Sheik pounced on him. The weapons crashed together, the seer grinding the edge of his surprisingly hearty knife against the great black sword.

He seemed thoughtful. "As I understand it, I'm employed by a whore," he remarked over their crossed steel. "So, yes. Yes we do."

The dark Link grinned. "Once a shadow…always a shadow."

Then he grabbed Sheik's mask and tore the cloth away.

The Sheikah yelled, throwing his arm up as if physically stricken and toppled back. The black swordsman leapt after him, blade arcing up for a two-handed stab that Link knew would punch straight through the martial artist's diaphragm and pin him dead in the sand. If Ganon could not survive it, then it seemed reasonable that Sheik absolutely would not. The ranch hand didn't even remember at what point he'd whistled for Epona, or when he'd managed to pull the quiver free. He set the bolt to string on instinct and drew it to his ear before Sheik even hit the ground.

Then there was the magic. Light bloomed off the length of the arrow like ribbons of marigold. The wood warmed between Link's fingers and the sharp tang of magic clogged his senses, the static smell buzzing through his nose and sending waves of power shuddering through his arms. He immediately forgave Zelda for missing Ganon so many times during that last fight; the magic in these things was so powerful it felt like gripping hard lightening between his fingers. He loosed it, barely conscious of the thought as his body did as is heart dictated.

The bolt missed the Shadow.

It didn't miss his blade though.

One half of the ebon steel snapped off with a hearty _Crack_! and spun harmlessly away from the fallen Sheikah, plunging point-down in the sand some fifty feet off. Sheik took the opportunity to kick the startled creature off him and somersault to his feet again, shielding his face in the crook of his arm. His eyes over the top of his elbow glinted furious iridescent crimson behind his bangs, moonlight caught on his knife.

"No one," said Sheik darkly.

Then he lifted his free arm and – to Link's shock and amazement – the same light peeling off the tip of his second Light Arrow blossomed at his finger tips, pouring into the blade. In the golden glow he looked strangely unreal, inhuman and ageless and so utterly immortal the dark Link cringed back from it, for a moment looking less like a shadow and more like a dark-skinned Hylian, his red eyes shocked and mad in the glow…then Link's second bolt slammed through his midriff.

Startled he stared down at it a moment; then turned almost comically to stare at his murderer. Link, bowstring still humming, shrugged. Acid magic eating through him, the darkling gestured in wordless fury to the wound. Link just shrugged again. Dark Link burst into damp clouds of blackness and melted into the sand like spilled water, the residue smoke drifting and causing Link to sneeze explosively at the sharp taste and smell of ozone and oil. Sheik dismissed the Light from his knife and the dunes faded back to palest silver again, the two travelers staring awkwardly at one another from opposite sides of the incline. There was a pause. Then:

"Shaa, didn't think he'd do that," Sheik explained curtly, clearing his throat. "Sorry."

Link nodded and looked politely elsewhere while the Sheikah bent and snatched his face-wrap from the sand, giving Epona his attention while the seer tucked the cloth back over his nose and hide the bottom of his face again. When he was finished, he looked as Link had always seen him, save a dash more human. There had been a genuine humiliation in his posture, like one caught with far more than their face bare. Link hadn't actually seen his face, but absurd as it seemed... Sheik was _embarrassed_. In an attempt to pretend nothing odd had just happened, the Sheikah shouted something to his mare and she trotted happily back to him, snuffling his hands in search of blood or sweets. He patted her nose fondly, tiredly.

"One Path averted, Kali," he muttered wearily to the pony, "far too close, cheh." His meaning was ambiguous as always.

Link gave him a look that told him so.

Sheik sighed. "There's time to explain Paths later. I'm afraid I expended some strength calling Light into my own weapon and I need to rest. Zelda's magic is not simple. It was perhaps foolish to try and adapt it for myself, cheh. I've spent a great deal of Power already and that…that was…_foolish_." He wobbled suddenly and had to grasp at Kali's mane to stay up right. Link realized with a startling wrench just _how_ tired his companion was. Red eyes blinked, startled. "_Benz_," he said softly. "Link, I'm afraid we can't stay put." He pulled himself onto Kali's back and forced himself visibly to stay upright, inhaling, then exhaling slowly. "I'm afraid…that much magic won't go…unnoticed."

He was gazing fretfully toward the empty desert.

Link followed his gaze.

There was a faint tail of dust rising from the dunes.

"Gerudo," rasped Sheik. His voice was ragged, his breathing suddenly shallow and too fast. He squeezed his dark red eyes shut, clenching his fists in the pony's mane and swearing softly to himself, again and again. "_Allah'shaa, allah'shaa, allah'shaa _… They've seen us now, cheh. It seems we may be in some trouble."

But, Link already knew that.

_**Author's Note:**_

_In need of proof-reading, but I wanted to get this up quick as possible. Sorry I've basically wasted the whole summer on stories I'm too scared to post instead of this one, but I sincerely hope this chapter satisfies some readers. The Sheik vs. Dark fight came out kind of rushed, so I might tweak it a little. Or not. I'm kinda lazy so you tell me how the pacing feels. I'm looking for suggestions on Gerudo names – ah ha! There __**will**__ be Gerudo! Hee hee! Hope you enjoyed. Critiques are welcome always. _


	10. Confess

Confess

_Contrary to popular belief it is neither fashionable, nor advisable to wear green in Hyrule._

_Often it gets you nothing but trouble and – should you be male – the occasional female Zora assault._

_No one knows the reason for the latter. _

_- Tips for the Traveling Tourist: Hyrule Kingdom_

This was arguably the worst conjunction of conjoining events that could have possibly had the providence to unravel. In fact, Sheik was reasonably sure the only foreseeable way to worsen the already _catastrophic_ situation would be the appearance of a particularly belligerent desert boar and several dust devils. In fact, those were the _only_ nasty foreseeable events that _hadn't_ occurred; so far every single unpleasant turn the Sheikah had attempted to avoid had – of course – bulled through his attempts and slammed into them. Then again, he reflected crossly, it wasn't like this was the first time seeing into the future had done him nil.

It was just so incredibly…_unavoidable_; each and every step of the way up to this debacle. The old magic needed to cross Realms in the first place was nigh well identical to, say, performing Zelda's most complex summoning incantation _while_ simultaneously hopping on one foot and balancing an orange on one's head. That he'd expend more than an intelligent amount of energy booking across the inter-dimensional gaps was a given. But, being forced to expend even more of it tracking, trailing, and traversing after a Hero _obnoxiously_ proficient at hiding himself was not something even he could See. Heap Zelda's most powerful and ancient enchanted weapon on that and – amazing! – there was a Path for disaster.

In retrospect, it was probably – well, certainly – an idiotic move to try a flashy bit of Light magic, while so dangerously low on Power, but at least Link had put an arrow through the Dark One's gut before he could be any more of a nuisance. Though, gifted as he was, Sheik doubted seriously the young ranch-hand could cough up enough magical energy for the immediate dispatch of five, most likely, hostile Gerudo.

Hopeful as usual though, his hand shifted unconsciously toward his quiver.

"No point," Sheik snapped impatiently. "Their sabers can block arrows."

The ranch-hand gave him a coolly defiant look, eyes irradiated powder blue and so blatantly Hylian they would give him away at forty paces and after making it clear it was a concession, he simply got on his horse. He looked absurdly small atop the enormous mare, tell-tale pale and like all of them Farore took – too young. Even in the dark, the most rookie Gerudo scout would peg him as an un-desert creature and mumbling in the corner of his Eye, dark and _grotesque_ Paths were crawling forward from remote possibilities to more than likely futures.

"Just get behind me!"

Sheik was irked to hear a degree of a mild panic in his tone.

He kicked Kali forward to take point against the tribeswomen, but didn't fool even himself. Upstaging the panic he could hear the _tired_ in his voice, thick and slurred as inebriation. He swallowed, sudden dryness itching in his throat and reached up to brush a hand to his temple, finding it too warm, his whole body too warm. He was dehydrated. He was drained. _Already_. They hadn't even crossed the Sea of Sand and he was physically crippling for no other reason than over exertion.

The horizon rolled off kilter, the pale blanket of sand swinging alarmingly into the sky as he sat there and the Sheikah tried desperately to clear the smear of exhaustion from his Sight. He closed his eyes, breathed. Nothing came to him; just a slurry of colorless motion and emotion roiling across the inside of his eyelids, the last dregs of his Power shuddering and twitching through his coiled muscles as he tried to find a way out. Nothing. He was blind in the Third Eye and he opened his two mortal ones to still catch a startling glimpse of the future.

He didn't like it much.

Beneath him, Kali shifted uneasily as the wind carried the scent of Gerudo horses to her. He leaned down and murmured familiar Sheikah words, outdated prayers for the most part – some of which he half-hoped _someone_ might answer.

-_green_-

The Council had a bone to pick and little as she liked it she was rather required he ruler of a Realm show up to be bickered at for at least a little bit. Howll had been correct about one thing: the House of Lyrics was in a tizzy. At her left, standing just behind her in an attempt to meld into the shadow she cast, Howll was making funny, hyperventilation noises of panic…or maybe he was trying not to laugh. Midna could never quite tell with him really. You could threaten him with decapitation with a butter knife and he might not even flinch whereas mention of backlogged or mis-dated scrollwork sent him spinning out in a one-man emotional imbroglio.

Listening to the accusations mounting against her, Midna counted the number of times Sivu said the word 'outrageous' and lost count at forty-two. Sivu, the oldest living member of the House of Lyrics (and the oldest living Twili if Midna's last census had been correct), was a bent old conjurer dating back to the Dark Days. He was notorious for having fathered eight likely-looking sons by three wives, all eight of whom he was denying their inheritance by living so godsdamned long. It went without saying there had been assassination attempts, but nothing substantial over the last century.

Really, Lyre's death had been something of an improvement in the prospects of his seven brothers. Midna noted duly that Chord (the second eldest) was altogether ignoring the goings-on and humming happily to himself in the corner. He seemed to have preoccupied his thoughts with other things. Gradually Midna stopped staring at distracted prince and returned to Sivu's monologue, which seemed to be drawing to a close.

She leaned over. "Howll?"

"Hmm?"

"Summary?"

"You're a traitor to your people, again, quoting back to the Siege of Twilight and all that," murmured Howl surreptitiously. "Not a murderer, he's not playing that card, but he's making something of a case with that fact you killed a Twili in the name of a Light Dweller. He's not downplaying Link, which is a surprise, but he's saying your reaction was unwarranted and uncalled for."

Midna mulled this over while Sivu called her a couple names in Old Twili. "Anything else?"

"Yes."

"What?"

"I told you so."

She sat forward again and vowed to string her advisor by his toes later.

Having successfully communicated his utmost rage and indignation, the head of the House of Lyrics was at last calming himself from his fit. Midna straightened herself up accordingly and tried to appear as though she'd been very much enamored with his speech – most of which had been insults through extended metaphor – and not counting the number of runes on the elder's hairless head. As he turned to face her, he hobbled heavily on a tall ebon-wood staff. It was old wood, cut from the heart of an ebon tree some six hundred years before and still pulsing with the great plant's power. The heirloom of the House Lyrics.

"You, princess," said Sivu, his voice a low, croaky treble, shaky as the finger he pointed to her. "Your mind is no longer of the shadows, no longer in the Twilight Realm, but ensnared by the noontide of the Trio's Chosen, by a Light – _hagh_!" He bent suddenly, hacking and retching and Harmon (third eldest) rushed forward to help him. Cloudy eyes – once intense purple – glowed a dull, cobwebby mauve as he straightened. Midna perceived some malicious cleverness behind the crippled seeming of his age. "You are fading, my princess. The Children of Light have your heart, trapped like some pale fluttering thing in a web of fire gold –"

Midna stopped him with a hand. Silence descended on the Court.

"My heart is not an insect to be caught," said Midna. "My heart is not something you may profess to know, Sivu of the Lyrics. Do not attempt to sway this gathering with allusions to my disloyalties. I am the heir of the House of Midnight and you should do well to remember that the blood of my line had long defended the borders of our Realm, has long kept the Dark Horizon at bay."

Sivu bowed low. "I have not forgotten it."

"You do a poor job of showing it," snapped Midna, bright eyes narrowed. "Your son was caught in a treacherous design against the Hero of Twilight, to whom we owe a debt, Sivu. A _debt_." The gathered members of Twili murmured and stirred at this, excitement and discomfort like a shuddery breath through the great hall. The princess felt her throat constrict and her fingers curl on the arm of her throne. "And now the Hero is in grave peril, which I can do very little to relieve since the destruction of the great Mirror prevents a crossing of the Realms."

"A Mirror broken by you, my Princess," Sivu reminded her.

"A Mirror that was broken to assure that _my loyalties_ and the safety of this realm should never again be threatened by what troubles come from the Light," retorted Midna. "The Hero is an ally and my comrade and your kin have put him in danger and for what? To test my _loyalties_?" She very nearly spat. "It is _your_ loyalty I question, Sivu. Lyre unleashed the One Unnamed. That alone calls for his death. He spoke against me and, Sivu, no one speaks against me. Last, Lyre was a fool and not worthy of the power you would have left to him and I regret killing him, never."

Behind her she heard Howll breathe a soft sigh of relief and grinned inwardly.

'_That should shut them up for a bit.'_

Sivu again bowed low to her. "I do not question your decision in killing Lyre, my lady; that was a choice made in good judgment," he said humbly. "Nor do I question your decision to break the Mirror of Twilight. All of these were sound rulings." Midna felt this was going altogether too smoothly. The leader of House Lyrics lifted his head slightly. "What I _do_ question, Midna, is how you discovered the scheme of my son at all."

Midna blinked.

Howll, at her side, tensed.

'_Oh! You old bastard! That's your game!'_ she cursed.

The old Twili straightened himself again, leaning still heavily upon his staff as he peered blearily up at her on her throne. "What…what," he stuttered, "business did the Princess of Twilight have in the Dark Realm that could have led her to discover anything amiss at all? Your duties do not require you to scout the Dark Horizon. That is a task left to the House of Serenity and the House of Rage and their scouts have told my men, upon casual inquiry, that you have been talking your 'walks' out beyond the Veil. They tell me you search the ruins of the Dark Kingdoms, hunting through murk and shade for prizes unknown."

Sivu, Midna noticed ironically, was no longer bowed with age, but seemed quite fierce and hale. Straight-backed and staring piercingly up at her from the raised dais before her throne.

"Tell us, princess, what do you seek in the Black Towers beyond the Waste?" he inquired slyly.

The gathered Court burst into excitable murmurings, the interest and morbid fascination of every Twili piqued. He had their attention, curse him, and he was making quite a scandal of this thing she'd been so certain was a secret and now she had no time for formulating defenses. Howll had stepped close enough to lay a hand on the arm of her chair behind her elbow, brushing her skin in a desperate ploy for her caution. She could feel him having a panic attack behind her. Midna closed her eyes briefly, gathering herself.

"You sent your spies to watch me?" she inquired.

"Not spies, my princess, merely a few rangers to guard you," Sivu assured her. "I requested them from the Houses of Dusk and Murmur."

Midna cursed again, blocked against accusing falsehoods against the man's witnesses. Dusk and Murmur were Houses loyal to Midnight and she knew these Twili rangers well. They would not lie for Sivu and that made their reports credible before the Court whether to her benefit or not. Several members of said families looked stricken, seeing their place in the design of House Lyrics. But Sivu was not through, he turned suddenly to the gathered House of Murmur and gestured his staff toward one of the men nearest him.

"Come, Tale," he said, waving. "Tell us of your lady's ventures into the Dark. Come, don't shrink." A lasso of power looped and pulled the startled ranger from the ranks of his family, staggered into the open. "Speak, ranger, I would have the Court hear it."

The younger Twili threw off the power with a fury in his eyes and expression. "Order me not, old _fool_!"

"You'll hold your tongue," snapped an elder from the sidelines.

"He's not an underling of Lyrics!" someone retorted immediately.

"_Silence_," came another.

"Who told you –?"

"Sivu holds rite here, Melodi."

"Old fool of a –"

"– utter disrespect."

"Stop it, children, or shall I place you in corners?" Midna inquired mildly of the bickering Houses. Silence fell again and when all the families had settled, to Tale she gave her attention, pursing her lips. "Do as he says," she said quietly. Tale was a friend. "There is no wrong on your behalf."

He looked apologetically to her. "My princess, I spoke to friends in confidence of your outings, thinking my thoughts guarded. I was ordered to follow you into the Dark Realm. From where the orders came, I knew not and saw them wise so I obeyed. From a distance I saw you search the Black Tower."

Sivu stepped in again. "Thank you, ranger," he said dismissively. "You've done well."

Tale stiffened.

Howll was grinding his teeth audibly.

"You'll not address members of any House that way," Midna said sharply to the conjurer. "Tale of Murmur is not your underling or mine. You forget our customs."

Sivu laughed. "Customs? You speak of customs having broken one of our greatest boundaries? The Black Tower is a forbidden place, a cursed and forgotten citadel that no Twili may venture to, be she princess or lowly ranger." Ugly bursts of muttering greeted this smear and Midna bit back a hot head-rush of vengeful magic. Sivu was sneering now, cruel and cunning. "Only a queen may venture there, which you are not. Our Law demands you speak of your purpose in breaking this taboo lest we call our penalties upon you. I ask again: What were you searching for in the Black Tower?"

Midna – in a moment of sudden fear – hesitated.

"There is only one artifact in the Black Tower!" Sivu spat.

"You do not –!" Midna essayed, but too late.

"You sought the Dark Mirror!" crowed the ancient Twili. "You sought that which may bring you to the Light once more!"

"I sought no such thing!" Midna cried, but her protest was ill-made. Her hold on this council was slipping and sure as shadows in a sunset, dark fingers of doubt and resent were sliding through the gathered Twili.

"The Dark Mirror," repeated Melodi of House Dusk, heir of her bloodline. Her voice was awe and utter terror. "It lies in the Black Tower?"

Midna fought back her own rising – was it panic? – anxieties and nodded. "It does. The House of Script keeps the records."

Howll's fingers were a fist near her elbow, shaking slightly. He'd given her those scrolls to read, he'd suggested them to her ages ago for the 'betterment of her knowledge' he'd said sarcastically. He was recalling that day with some regrets she imagined. The stage had been set and Midna had not foreseen this in her stratagem against the House of Lyrics, had not realized how far ahead her opponent's foresight outstripped her own. She failed to keep her secrets in the labyrinths of her heart.

"It was rumored," Midna said softly, seeing the structure of her entrapment even as she spoke, "that Ganon's dark artifact was a portal through which one might escape through to the Hyrule Kingdom. The One Unnamed was sent through that way before, and he escaped through that way now." She gazed at the back of her own hand, as if in wonder. "It was hidden there. A twisted perversion of the Mirror of Twilight and I sought it to find if the rumors spoke any truth."

"This is…" Melodi struggled for words.

"Outrageous," Sivu finished. His lips curled. "This treachery occurred before the release of the One Unnamed. Your reasons to seek the Dark Mirror were your own." He smiled a thin, white smile as his fangs were sharp as her own and unbroken. "You've been caught, princess, seeking the Light and caught by the Light. Your heart lies with one of the Goddesses' Chosen in the noontide of Hyrule."

Midna rose from her throne, her face a serene and cool mask. "Then you have caught me in my weakness, Sivu. I congratulate you."

The Court burbled. Howll hissed an alarmed '_Midna_!' at her back, but she ignored it.

"You confess then?" Sivu demanded eagerly, eyes shining in wickedness.

Quietly she regarded him, her eyes the color of thoughtful sunset, her flaming hair clothed in the dark robes of her royal bloodline, the bright stone of Midnight set in her brow. She regarded him as a queen, crowned and proud. Even as she did, though, she could see the trap so clearly, wrought by her own hands by her treacherously restless heart. Eager and unflagging and so utterly selfish, it had betrayed her. Her love of her people had been diminished and she had not fully grasped the reason – or not openly allowed herself to grasp it – until now. Why her devotion to her duty no longer defined the shape of her heart.

"I confess," she whispered.

Midna smiled; a thin and bittersweet grin.

"I love the Hero of Twilight."

-_green_-

"Just get behind me!" Sheik ordered angrily.

Link heard the sudden tension in his usually dismissive tone, a cutting urgency not unlike the kind he took on when the Shadow was present and slavering for blood. The seer was looking unwell to say the least and on the razor edge of collapse to say the worse. His narrow shoulders were hunched in the moonlight, his hands clenched in the thick of his horse's mane, pale head bowed like a man catching his breath. The tang of magic had waned to only a faint lemony smell on the wind, barely crossing the threshold of perception to Link, indicating to the young hero that the Sheikah's magic was perhaps at its end.

His comrade seemed to gather himself somehow, breathing deeply and going still for a period. Link restlessly ran his thumb up and down the leather of Epona's reins, trying to feel in his hands the surge of power he'd placed in his bow only moments before. Sheik had placed the spell on the weapon, but Link had felt the energy drain out of him with each bolt, as if the feathered shafts had sucked the vitality off his soul to power their purpose. Perhaps they had, Link didn't feel he had the energy for a third bolt, some deep place in him aching hollowly where the Light Arrows had drawn off his strength.

"When they come," Sheik said suddenly, "don't speak. Avoid their eyes if you can, cheh, and for the Goddesses' sake, _don't_ attack them unless they attack us. I doubt you can slay five Gerudo, as I'm currently not a match for even one."

This was alarming coming from the Sheikah, who up until now had been more or less an unspoken source of reassurance. It spoke of a very real danger and a very real weakness now, if the seer was professing his disabilities to the former ranch-hand. Link kept his bow at the ready, watching the pale curls of sand rising toward them and the silhouettes of women in the darkness, mounting and riding unsaddled. Even from a distance, Link could see they used no bridals and the eyes of a ranch-hand told him their mounts were four mares and a small, angry stallion. They all rode expertly.

Sheik rose in his stirrups suddenly, lifting an arm and his voice in greeting, slipping into yet another tongue of the desert. He shouted something to the approaching women, who made no answer besides urging their mounts into a faster gallop. The seer didn't react to this, only sat back, bright eyes glittering in the dark.

"What business," came a snarl, "does a Sheikah have in Gerudo lands?"

The woman that spoke checked her horse with practiced fluidity, stopping only yards off from Kali, who snorted and stamped until Sheik soothed her. The other four reined in behind her, peeling away and fanning out until they effectively surrounded the two travelers, looking unfriendly and dangerous in the silver moonlight. Even in the dark, their hair glittered deep copper red and hung in long plaits down their slender backs. Their leader, on the stallion, bore a small chakra stone on her brow and was all dressed in white, her breasts bound in an embroidered white cloth, her loose-fit leggings white and silken. The other four were dressed similarly in magentas and reds, but wore sheer veils over their faces.

Only the leader was bare-faced.

"I said what business do you have here?" the Gerudo spat, her eyes flashing pale gold in the dark. Her accent was heavy and precise. "Speak quickly!"

The others made ready with desert glaives, curved blades set on long poles, based bound in red cloth to catch blood. Link watched them through the corner of his eye only, keeping Sheik's warnings in mind. The Gerudo were all very tall, all taller than he and Sheik by nearly half a head. Aside from leggings, soft shoes and their meager shirts the Gerudo wore little else, only a saber tucked in the sash at the hip and simple gold bangles about darkly skinned arms and wrists. Each of them looked…strong, wiry. Link believed Sheik when he said they were strong as men. Pale eyes gleamed cat-like and keen with interest, watching him so intensely he felt it physically.

"We flee an enemy," Sheik said simply.

The woman snorted. "An enemy? I see no enemy here and none for miles. Who is this enemy you flee?"

"A dark creature, set on our trail by magic and malice. We mean to destroy it," Sheik said quietly. "You saw the magic I used against it in the distance. A powerful spell that will only buy us time, cheh. He will return." There was a long pause, in which Sheik grew annoyed. "You know I speak no lie, Djiin."

The leader, Djiin, laughed raucously, throwing her head back. "What's this, the proud Sheik of the Sheikah without wit?" She smirked, drawing her saber from her hip and leveling at Sheik's chest. Link stiffened. "Or perhaps this is the Seer of the Desert, at last without strength to resist the Gerudo."

It was spoken in jest, but Sheik didn't react and didn't reply which only served to amuse her to smile slowly. Her teeth shone very white and even in the nubile dark of her face. She kicked her mount forward, bringing the stallion almost alongside Kali, bringing the masked seer within reach of her blade. Murmurs and giggles passed between the Gerudo, lovely, feminine and utterly brutal somehow. The Sheikah ignored them, his gaze fixed coldly on Djiin, whom he seemed to know best of the gathered tribeswomen. She paused to gloat a little before going on.

"You _are_ weak, aren't you?" she marveled.

"Kill him, Djiin!" said one eager Gerudo.

"Yes. Spill his filthy blood!" urged another.

"Silence," she said, off-hand, still gazing in delighted shock at her captive. "Answer me, Sheik. If I wanted to kill you now, could you stop me?"

"Shaa, you've always had Paths to kill me," replied Sheik cryptically. "You've just been blind to them."

"You and your tricks."

"Not tricks, Djiin. Truth."

The woman sighed. "I grow weary of your riddles, Sheikah. I can see you've no strength in you; your body shakes even as I stand here." The edge of her blade settled just below Sheik's collarbone. "I would wager," she whispered wickedly, "that I could have a look under the mask even." The other Gerudo shrieked with laughter Link didn't understand and a strange flutter of fear washed through the Ordonian, followed by a slow burning anger. Even with his face downcast, he couldn't keep his eyes fixed obliviously on the sand as Sheik would have liked. He looked up and – as always – his gaze was felt.

Djiin turned her golden stare on Link. "He's not of the desert," she said mildly, studying him.

The Gerudo on his left flicked her glaive under his chin and startled his face up. The rider made a soft, appreciative noise in her throat and said something quickly to Djiin in their own tongue, laughing as one pleasantly surprised. Link caught the word 'Hylian' in her slurry of alien syllables and knew his race was being discussed. The other Gerudo were watching him now, their pale eyes searching and focused on something he didn't care speculate.

"You keep good company," said Djiin to the man beside her. The seer looked decidedly unhappy. "You must have hoped to pass through our territory unnoticed, yes? Trespass on our lands with so rare a thing as a Hylian warrior with you."

"Do not make rash decisions," Sheik warned. His red eyes were sharp and dangerous.

"It's not rash, if the favor is mine." She jerked her chin. "Nilif. Mataj."

The two Gerudo flanking him moved at once, kicking their mares forward. Link raised his hands disarmingly as their blades moved in toward his torso, brooking no trickery. Epona huffed and stomped irritably at the approach of other horses. Link noted with amusement that the wild seeming desert horses shied from the grouchy cart horse. One nickered and cantered back and the women riding her shot him a startled, suspicious look but Link just shrugged a little. Nilif, the one on the left, jabbed him somewhat roughly with the end of her blade.

"Toss your weapons to Miki," she said, indicating the Gerudo beside her. "Slowly, or I'll cut that pretty face."

No giggling this time, but Link sensed hidden smirks as he carefully un-shouldered his quiver and threw it to the woman, then his bow. He un-strapped the sword from his hip, sheath and all, and tossed it to her las, though, somewhat reluctantly. While he disarmed Sheik exchanged Gerudo words with Djiin, heated words if his low, growling tone was any indication. She seemed to have a rare upper-hand and as such, was taking time to enjoy it. She smiled as Sheik argued with her, watching his battered hands making flighty diving and directive gestures doing nothing to persuade her.

She said something sarcastic.

Sheik said something short and unpleasant.

She retorted.

He replied.

She cut his forearm with her saber.

Link snarled, Epona leaping forward eagerly at the nearest desert pony and snapping her teeth at them. Four razor sharp glaives dove at his upper body and he checked his mount stiff again, lest he impale himself on one of the extended weapons. Pale eyes were narrow slits above silken veils, glittering and perilous in their well-shaped faces. Djiin watched Link's reaction with thinly veiled annoyance and Sheik was giving him a look none-to-pleased himself. The wound was shallow, but that did nothing to quell the injustice of it, he and Sheik having yet done nothing to warrant such an attack.

Blood dripped and soaked into the sand between the horse's hooves, the desert drinking the spilled liquid thirstily. No one else noticed, save Link, but the ground where the red droplets fell seemed to shimmer briefly. Then the sand shifted and even the stains of red were sucked down beneath the grains. The Ordonian averted his gaze, the scent of blood and citrus magic stinging his nose and he knew instantly Sheik had plagued these Gerudo for a time far longer than his seeming age. Even his blood had a dusty scent, an ancient smell.

_Well, these girls are plainly overstepping their bounds then, aren't they? _said Midna's ghost quite clearly. _Respect old magic, you should. It's proper manners and all that._

The Divine Beast agreed.

Link glared at the Gerudo next to him and she jerked back, startled by his sudden fierceness and her mare whinnied in dismay. The other horses stirred and only Epona seemed bored with the goings on, gazing dolefully about, hoping to trample at least one of these cheeky women and their dainty little horses. The Ordonian frowned slightly, blinking as something rushed through him. There was a strange shiver in his skin, crawling through his bones and Link pretended to massage a kink in his wrist while it passed. It felt hot and sudden, pleasure and pain. It felt wolfish.

"Your friend is unruly," said Djiin. She seemed unnerved.

"He's not of the desert, cheh. He knows nothing of this world," said Sheik evenly. His eyes were on Link too. "We mean only to pass through, as you said. Let us do that. The Path we are set upon is not one you want a part of."

Djiin inspected her bloodied weapon. "This blade is unclean," she said regretfully. "That was a mistake I suppose, I liked this sword." She wheeled her horse to the dawning horizon. "You and your Hylian friend come with us to our encampment. Nooru will want to see you. She is the High Priestess of the Spirit Temple and you'll answer to her as to what your purpose is in the desert."

"Did you stop speaking Gerudo in the last ten years?" Sheik burst out angrily. "Or did you simply ignore all I said? The Shadow will follow us wherever we might go and slay all who stand between him and his prey. That is a darkness your priestess cannot contend with."

"You speak what you think is Truth," said Djiin thoughtfully. "But you've been wrong before."

"We cannot waste the daylight!" shouted Sheik.

Djiin turned her deadly eyes on him, contempt in every line of her face. "The words of a Sheikah mean nothing to those of Gerudo blood. You go to Nooru." She turned away from the furious seer. "If anyone's to kill the last true Sheikah, it will have to be her." She glanced surreptitiously at Link. "What happens to the Hylian lies with her judgment."

"You'll regret that," Sheik spat. "And that _is_ True."

Then they set off, captives and captors, in the opposite direction Link's instincts said they were to go.

**Author's Note:**

_GryphonDown asked a very good question recently: 'How the bloody hell can the Sheikah have been extinct for over two-hundred years if Impa was around just a few generations earlier during the events with the Hero of Time?' Well, I guess that's my own fault, for getting wrapped up in my history theories. Sorry. It's all tied up in the history of the Sheikah and the sundering of Those That See. Put simply, some went, some stayed. Sheik will explain the details in a later chapter or at least I think he will. I'm actually surprsied no one else noticed that little timeline tic. _

_In the meantime, I hope you enjoyed the first actually romantic thing I've written…ever. Someone said 'I love…' I don't think I've done that before. I don't even really support Midna/Link. How the hell did she fall in love him? Was I not paying attention or something? Jeez…_

_Reviews make my heart soar and my fingers type-crazy. Laterz!_


	11. Fear

Fear

"_And they say he rose like starlight from the edge of the black forest_

_that his shine defined the dark and gave shadows their edges…and with them_

_the want to make use of their sharpness."_

_- Obscure Odes of Olde Oracles_

"I'm sorry."

Howll looked up from the floor, his eyes bright and sanguine red in the shadow of his bone structure. "I don't believe, Princess, that apology is mine to accept."

She smiled a little bitterly and ran her fingers through her flame-ginger hair with a sigh. "No. It's not, is it?"

"No."

"I meant to apologize to them."

"I know."

"All of them." She gestured vaguely to the window and the Twilight beyond.

He laced his fingers together between his knees, looking down. "I know."

"Ah, Howll." She laughed softly. "What have I done?"

He didn't reply.

They were sitting in an empty corridor on a bench beside a window. It was past Sol-set, but that meant little in a world where there was no night. No doubt the entire Realm was awake and talking tonight, so why would its ruler and her confidante be any exception?

The inscriptions curled down Howll's left thigh were glowing red to his ankle, glittering eye-catchingly in agitation. They had been doing so since the Council gathering and indicated to her that he knew perfectly well what he risked remaining at her side. The rest of his House was, no doubt, currently up and discussing what, Midna knew, Sivu was calling heresy, treachery, betrayal. Why Howll, grumpy, pragmatic, rule-abiding Howll was still here, still acting advisor…she could not say. Then again, she could say very little of Howll anyway. He was, with perhaps the sole exception of herself, the strangest Twili of this generation.

"It was at Lanayru," she announced, as if having come to a decision. "That's when."

"When what?"

"I realized for the first time."

"Realized…"

"I might love him."

"The Light Dweller?"

"No, _Zant_. Of course, you twat. And you can kindly stop calling him 'Light Dweller'. That's entirely too vague. I know you've only got one Light Dweller you've vested any interest in, but I've known several. Be more specific."

"…Lanayru is the lake province?"

"Yes." She turned to him with a perfectly serious look on her face. "If I were ever to suggest anything, it would be fresh Hylian trout. Straight out of the rivers, grilled and salted slightly. There was also this spicy plant to sprinkle on it when we were so fortunate as to happen across a patch. Never could say the name properly." She sighed, wistful, the aroma of herbs and cooking fish in her eyes and she smiled fondly out the window. "Rivers are amazing things, Howll. I never told him we don't have rivers here."

Howll grew dour at her tangent. "You were saying…"

"Hmm?" she inquired, as if waking from a daydream. "Oh yes. Lanayru. We'd gathered the last fused shadow and I'd told him we were squared up. He wasn't paying me much attention of course. Lake Hylia is freezing and he hates cold. You know, he was nearly incinerated on Death Mountain, eaten alive in Ordonna, cut to ribbons a dozen other times, but he was only ever irritable when cold. He was an awful _bastard_ the whole time we were up on Snowpeak. Anyway, he didn't owe me anything more. He'd saved his friends, I had my magic and he was free to go as he pleased."

Midna laughed softly and ironically to herself. She'd taken off the headdress and the robes again, as if the fabric had grown exponentially in weight since she'd last donned them. Without them, she seemed altogether smaller to Howll, less like a queen, more like a woman. Less like adamantine, more like glass. He also knew that was a silly thing to think, because Midna was delicate as folded steel. He surmised she was twice as deadly. Nevertheless, the dangerous princess laid her head on her arms, closed her bright eyes and went silent for a moment, as if gathering her thoughts.

"Zant caught us off guard," she said softly, curled her fingers in and clenched them. "We weren't ready. I remember that. He turned around and Zant was…gods, standing right there. Close enough to touch." The once-imp shook her lovely head, smiling bitterly to herself. "He was _scared_. That's what I never told anyone in the Courte. Given, I wasn't doing much better, but at least I knew what to expect. Link…he had no idea what he was up against. I don't care what that glowing goat spirit says, he wasn't channeling any hero-phantoms when Zant struck him down. Goddesses know what Zant might have done to him if Lanayru hadn't interfered."

She paused suddenly, thoughtfully, then turned to Howll.

"You know how old he is?"

The male Twili frowned a little. "You…never said…"

"He's eighteen," she said, chewed her lip, corrected herself, "_Was_ eighteen…he'd be nineteen now, wouldn't he?"

Howll frowned. "How do humans measure time? Is that greater or less than our calendar year?"

"Less."

Her advisor's brows shot up. "How much less?"

Her expression was perfectly calm. "Nearly half."

"Then…he's very young."

"Very."

"And that does not affect the way you…feel for him?" He sounded as though he might be talking about a stomach ache she were having recently, not love.

She folded her hands primly.

"When Zant took the fused shadows, mocked my fall, ground my face into the dirt, called me 'my Midna' – all I could think was 'You hurt my wolf! That's _my_ wolf, _my_ farmboy. _Mine_!'" She frowned. "Which is a bit silly, now that I hear it out loud, but there you have it." Midna turned to the window again, eyes sweeping out over the orbitals and the tenebrous skies, her kingdom suspended on the unknown thermals of the atmosphere. "You know, for all his madness, Zant was right about one thing. He said that the Twili have spent so long banished to this world of half Light, we've forgotten what it means to want."

"Meaning what?"

"We want Light just as much as anyone, but we're too stuck up to admit it," she shrugged.

"Ah," said Howll, as though this confirmed something.

"Don't scoff. Humans don't stagnate like we do, Howll. They change constantly, though they don't seem to recognize it – every day a brand new breathing thing, like the world being reborn every _morning_." She breathed the alien word like a prayer. "They wake up new. They die but, oh Howll, how they _live_. Half a year in the world of Light was more real than half a decade in the Twilight, violent and dangerous and evil sometimes…but you felt." Her eyes closed. "You felt that the worlds were _singing_."

Her hands had come up while she spoke and clasped the air before her like she could snatch the essence of what she spoke from the wind. She blinked and seemed to realize what she was doing suddenly, her sunset eyes bright and startled. She gazed at her princess's hands, soft as butterfly-things, furling and unfurling like pale blossoms. Her expression seemed to indicate she was pleased with their independent ventures.

Howll snorted, startling her out of her reverie.

"_Singing_?"

"Don't be jealous, Howll. It's not my fault you've the emotional range of a pebble."

"Sivu's desire to see you dethroned is real enough," he said with vague contempt. "Even now he's mustering his followers to turn the people's will against you. He would see you stripped of your powers as ruler. He would see you banished. What I want to know is what you're going to do about _that_."

If he was moved by her speech he didn't show it. Midna found herself faintly embarrassed for having said anything at all to the dour record-keeper. Nevertheless, she conceded that he did have a point and there was something to be said for action. If Sivu had his way, whether or not she'd fallen in love with the smell of hay and grilled trout would be a moot point.

"This world is constantly on the cusp of darkness," she told Howll curtly, tone expressing that she might like to throw him out the window. "Clinging to the last licks of sunlight as they go, but they never do. We never have a sunset to make us feel as though time is running out or a dawn to give us hope. We don't live like we're going to die and that's why we've diminished. We've not enough to fear."

"Yes." He rolled his eyes ceilingward. "Any ideas that might be useful?"

The princess smiled her imp's knife-cut grin. "Howll, my dear," she said lyrically, her hair beginning to shimmer, "I have _such_ ideas." Her tresses seemed to light up like hot metal, melting, spilling down her collarbones like molten gold, shimmering incandescent green and orange, lighting up the room like sunlight.

-_ode_-

After the preliminary trial, Zelda had called for a recess until the next day. This gave certain precocious and pugnacious lady-knights a chance to hunt down people more adequately suited for talking than herself. Sadly, having spent the better part of two nights wide awake and aggravated her scarce patience was even less accommodating than usual. Rather than use the recess to clean up, comb her hair, remedy body odor and the like, certain lady-knights used the time to sprint out of the castle, across town and kick his door in. Shad was sympathetic, but understandably put upon.

"Ashei," he said very seriously, "just because I'm a bookworm does not mean I'm qualified to be a lawyer."

She hissed, shaking her fists jarringly with restrained rage. "But you could _try_ at least, yeah. You owe him too."

He was a little sheepish now. "Of course, but that…"

"You're always running out on expeditions with him."

"Yes, however…"

"You're best books are about the stuff he showed you, yeah."

"Yeah, but…"

"You've got that job with the university because of your work on the ruins, yeah."

"I _know_ that, nevertheless…"

"If you don't help me I swear to the Goddesses –!"

"_Ashei_! Godsdammit, I never said 'no'!"

She blinked up at him and for the first time in a long time Shad saw clearly a young woman, startled and soft with the shock of his agreeable reply. He realized just then that – when she didn't persist in glowering – his friend's eyes were a charming almond shape and the precise color of black coffee. For a strained and lovely moment, she just stared openly at him with that look on her face and he at her with his glasses crooked, trying to appear sincere (which was difficult given his position). Then she seemed to realize the state of her exposure and cleared her throat, embarrassed.

"Oh, well…" She looked flustered, then angry. "Well, why didn't you just say so?"

"It slipped my mind when you tackled me over my breakfast, dear girl," he said dourly.

Indeed, his toes were currently suspended a couple feet off the floor, Ashei's angry fists buried in the collar under his chin, his back pinned against the Hylian pine molding of his study. Because she was Ashei she didn't have the propriety to look properly apologetic, so she just lowered the scholar off the wall and stepped back. Shad shot her a particularly irritable look and straightened his glasses and tunic with all the quiet dignity he could muster (which wasn't much given he just got beat up by a girl…_again_). Then he pushed past her to the table in his study. His toast and eggs no longer his primary concern, he jabbed a wedge of bread in his mouth and went about clearing the table so they could talk.

"Th'oh," he said through his toast, arms full of books and breakfast, "'r yo' gonna th'ay wha' 'appened?"

"That's just it," Ashei fumed, stomping in her usual circle about his desk. "I don't exactly _know_ what happened."

"Tha's wha' the're th'aying."

"You've heard the gossip, then?"

He extracted the toast from the corner of his mouth. "Link is an evil child killer or Link is a deranged foreign murderer, which one specifically?"

"Godsdammit," she muttered.

Shad dropped into his chair with a grunt, chin in palm, slumped like he never did around anyone else. "Look, it's not as if this was entirely unexpected. Link is even less cut out for the politicking court atmosphere than you – if that were even humanly possible – and now it's coming to the forefront. Fond as I am of the old boy, he insulted a lot of people when he left. City people and aristocrats and scholarly know-it-alls like me and my university colleagues are a rather sensitive lot. When farm boys turn us down on things we get our delicate feelings hurt…then we start gushing invectives about said farm boy. You should hear what they say about him now, dear girl. Dreadful use of adjectives. My ilk are frightful stuck-up elitist bastards, I'm afraid. And we have influence."

"Then use it to help him."

"Let me rephrase that. All of my ilk _besides myself_ have influence. I have piffle."

Ashei's tone was dead of humor. "Are they going to convict Link of murder?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because he's a godsdamned foreigner, that's why."

The mountaineer laid her hand flat on a bookshelf and leveled her hell-gate stare at him. "I don't believe that."

"Oh come off it, Ashei," snapped Shad, irritable. "What was it that you said? That Hyrule was empty of all men of valor? Well, it's true. We have none whatsoever presently or previously. Farore has to pick them out of the trees, m'girl, the trees whenever we need saving." He dropped his elbows on the table and folded his arms, peering as his blurred reflection in the varnish. Ashei was quiet and angry. "Sorry if I'm coming off terribly snobbish again, but he's from Ordonna. This is Hyrule. What did you expect? He turned down a _knighting_. From the _Queen_. There's only one of two ways to interpret that: He's arrogant or ignorant. Neither are popular, both are only aggravated by the fact he's not from Hyrule proper."

Ashei slammed a fist into the table by Shad's elbow and put her face in his, so close she could have head butted him over the back of his chair. "Since when does being tired make you a bastard?" she spat, every sinew of her sooty, battered body venting her wrath like heat off a fire. "Since when is common blood equal to ignorance? Since when did the Hero cease to be something to fear?"

If Shad had been a lesser man, he might have quailed under her soul-obliterating stare. As it was, he'd grown accustomed to having his soul endangered on a regular occasion and he merely folded his hands beneath his chin and peered up at her, patient as only a long time friend could be.

"You know, you're actually quite eloquent when you choose it, Ashei."

"Get stuffed you pompous over-educated elitist son of a two-rupee whore."

"See? Poetry."

Ashei, in a fit of exhausted rage, took his toast and chucked it at his head. He didn't bother to dodge it.

"Don't talk down to me, Shad. I'm the first lady-knight in Hyrulian history, yeah. I just let five –" Her voice locked then thawed in her throat. She swallowed. "–five people die under my care. I should be burning in effigy all over Hyrule, I expected it." She narrowed her dark eyes at him. "Why aren't they flaying _me_? Why are they going after Link? Don't you dare tell me blood, yeah. He doesn't even talk enough to have a godsdamned Ordonian accent, yeah. What is difference does blood make?"

"Plenty," Shad chirped, leaning back in his chair and sitting up smartly. "Tell me, when knights challenge you to duel do they do it because you're a woman or because your mother was a mountain shepherd's whore?"

Ashei's arm snapped forward like a prehensile scorpion tail. Even expecting it Shad missed the fractional second where her blow lashed toward his face. But she didn't hit him. She stopped, mere inches away from the scholar's parchment fine cheekbone, freezing. Her fist hung there like a question. Eventually she lowered it. Shad was no longer looking at her by the time she dropped her arm. Rather, he had turned his attentions to the table, running his thumb along the edge of it.

"This is from Ordon," he told her pointlessly.

"Shad. I will throttle you until you die, yeah."

"No listen," he insisted, straightening his spectacles. "Did you know that in all our history, never once has any ruler of Hyrule tried to extend their territory into Ordonna? Not even during the Great War? Do you know why?"

"Shad…"

"It's not because Hyrule's armies can't effectively control a collection of farmers and goat-herders," he said forcefully. "And a couple monsters and ghoulies has never been a particular deterrent to those in power." He smiled a little, stroking his thumb across the wood, like he could divine something from the grain. "It's that bloody _forest_."

Ashei narrowed her eyes. "I don't understand."

"You know, when we went there together, to the Sacred Grove, I could feel the magic in that place?" he asked, looking up at her. "Siphoning through every bole and branch? Wild as the day it the world was created? Ashei, I know you won't understand this because you've never been scared of a bloody thing in your life, but people are afraid of what comes out of Ordonna. They're scared of those trees and those rivers and those blue eyed boys that come out of there and you know why?" He went on without waiting for an answer. "It's because we can't grasp it. It's not controllable and safe or expected or knowable."

Ashei regarded him coolly. "Shad? Are you afraid of _Link_?"

The scholar smiled wanly, a tired, guilty festival mask. "Look at it this way: we've lived to see one man – not even a man, a youth – kill a god. One country bumpkin, from a province no one's provided to care for in decades, rise up and strike down the darkness itself. And, incredibly, this is the second occasion in our history for that to happen. You tell me that they're not afraid?" Shad took his glasses off and looked his friend very seriously in the eye. "My dear girl, we Hylians are simply terrified."

-_ode_-

The Gerudo Fortress was surprisingly beautiful.

Colorful tents of skin and cloth were set in festival color spectrum around the wells near the gates, sliding out from behind the curve in the stony canyon walls. Link – once again ousted from his comfortable climate preferences – still maintained that he'd seen more beautiful places (strange and fey sights, terrible and awesome worlds) but never some place quite like this. All around, women veiled and red-haired and bronzed were milling and laughing, yelling and bartering, fighting and testing blades against one another in deadly/neighborly combat. The disharmonic sound of desert tongues and desert women made this place sing in a land of barrenness.

The earthy red-orange walls were cut and scraped like warm sandcastle cubes from the valley walls, their color reminded Link powerfully of Kakariko's pepper-crimson stone, but their substance was a softer stuff. Structures were built straight into the walls and upper rooms carved like honey-comb networks into the cliffs, young Gerudo girls leaping from windows on long rope ladders to repel down the rock face to ground level. Three story stone apartments towered high as any in Hyrule Castle Town, the sweeping cliffs – jutted into the sky like bones of the earth laid bare against sky – easily competed for grandeur with Hyrule Castle.

Link had exactly two seconds to appreciate the aesthetic loveliness of the architecture before one of its equally lovely residents hit him in the face with a bucket of water. The icy shock of it knocked any and all admiration straight out of the young Ordonian as every Gerudo in the immediate vicinity began to whoop and cheer.

The girl with the bucket lifted her weapon triumphantly as her sisters loosed strange trilling noises of victory, shaking wrists manacled in trickets and whooping. Dripping wet and confused, the young swordsman couldn't decide if he was being made fun of or honored. The Gerudo crowded Link's horse, chattering and burbling animatedly, trying to push articles of food and clothing into his arms, wrapping his startled hands around strange tokens, clasping small gold bangles on his wrists. All were smiling, all were excited, all for him. For someone used to standing quietly in corners unless required, this was more than a little alarming.

"You are the first male we have seen in nearly a decade," said Djiin, smiling warmly at him. "Our last King was slain while he was still young." There was a tracery of sadness in her tone.

Link found it difficult to be sympathetic.

Only ten feet behind him the other three Gerudo rode with Sheik, riding silently for the last hour or so after a whole day of yelling and arguing with Djiin from horseback and gaining nothing for his efforts but a dry throat. They were flanking him like one guards a leper, riding at glaive length on all sides as if unwilling to touch him or be drawn into the same air as he occupied. As the women finished fawning over the young Ordonian, they withdrew to harass his passing, hissing and buzzing their tongues at the slender, bright-eyed Sheikah. They kicked dust at him, threw sand in his face and pelted him with small pebbles while the Gerudo scouts laughed and maneuvered their horses out of the way. Link burned sharply and began to pull Epona around.

Djiin grabbed his arm, grip firm, stopping him.

Link struck her hand off and she withdrew to a respectable distance, unfazed.

"This is an ancient feud," she explained, her heavy accent forcing her words to slow. She took the reins of his horse from him with a tempered look. "You are not one of the Desert and do not understand."

"He's a friend," Link said at last, tersely

Djiin laughed. "So he speaks! Good, I was afraid you might be mute."

The Ordonian glared.

"Ahhh, a tragedy this," the woman said wistfully. "That a warrior of Hyrule might return to us only be accompanied by a member of the _Sheikah_." She spat the word as one did poison. "He's the last of his people you know, last full-blood seer. After he dies, there won't be a drop of cursed blood left in the Realm. It will be a glorious day. Maybe even tomorrow."

Link stiffened immediately and knew by the coolness that passed into her face that his own expression had taken on an obviously martial nature. Midna's ghost sighed somewhere overhead.

'_Hopeless. You've the political grace of a bellowing bull-goat.'_

Djiin tilted her head, frowning. "You would fight us, wouldn't you? For him? Why? How long have you been close? Years? Decades to inspire such loyalty?" Link grimaced and from it the truth was construed. She laughed; her voice riddled with music and anger. "Ah, so he's not your friend. He's but a guide, an acquaintance at best, _kade bhal_. You'll do him more good if you distance yourself from him. Those untainted by the Cursed People hold more sway; being a pure Hylian you might certainly hold high regard. You may even be able to barter for the life of a Cursed one."

He arched a puzzled brow.

"You don't know our history. Very well, a short version. There will be more time for detail later tonight, my friend." She seemed rather pleased with herself as she said this. Pleased in a way that made Link bristle. She didn't notice his new ruff, however.

"Of all people of Hyrule, Sheikah alone professed to know the nature of Time and Truth," she said softly, reverently, as a woman speaking of things sacred and hushed. "They came from the Deep Desert, wraiths, red-eyed and blessed with strange magicks. They worshiped not the Goddesses Three but their own entity of power and for this the Goddesses stretched out their hand and blotted them from the Realm." She sat forward again, nodding assertively. "This is history, _kade bhal_. It is the only 'truth' you need know and have none of the Sheikah's trickery. He may be bound by blood to speak only what is true, but don't trust him for that alone. There are ways for a man to speak and never once lie, yet completely obscure the truth."

She looked at him. "Do you understand such a thing?"

Link frowned, gaze falling away toward the dusty earth. For a moment the sand gave way to marble, to polished mirror floors and the scent of perfume to send his head spinning. He understood the nature of words well enough not to trust them anymore.Djiin's keen eyes caught the treacherous shadow that passed Link's face.

"Ah, then you can understand," she concluded, smiling knowingly at him. "Your loyalty is admirable, _kade bhal. _Nooru will hear your words and if you still wish to help your guide you may. But disclaim him. If you are not under his thrall, you may barter for the Sheikah's life freely. It is simple. Do this."

His attentions wandered back to Sheik. The seer's eyes at this distance held nothing recognizable as emotion, but then again Sheik displayed incredible ability to rage like a psychopath and return in a blinking to utter calm. The discrepancy of his moods made him hard to interpret and whether or not Zelda had sent him to help, Sheik had displayed a remarkable lack of empathy for the entire situation (short of the swearing and the insults, of course. He seemed fairly sincere in his passions about those), naturally implying coercion into service. If anything, the enigmatic blonde didn't even _like_ him so much as put up with him. Djiin's advice was probably sound given that.

But still…

He didn't get any farther though. At that moment Miki appeared from the crowd, shoving her way to Djiin's side. Miki spoke no Hylian and said something rapidly to her leader in Gerudo tongue. The white-clan woman nodded, questioned her briefly then looked to Link again. "We approach the shrine now. Is your loyalty to the Sheikah so great you would turn down room and proper bedding?" she inquired.

Link arched a brow.

"A rogue Sheikah cannot be anywhere but the dungeon while in Gerudo territory. We've had trouble with Sheik before and it's not as though he's unused to it. No reason you should suffer too, _kade bhal_."

The young man glowered in a way that made it perfectly clear that – bangles or not – he wasn't disclaiming anyone. Djiin seemed saddened by this and shook her lovely head.

"Very well." She said something to Miki in a low tone and the girl nodded and elbowed her way through the thinning throng of females. "I will petition to have your guide brought with you, but I can make no promises. Lady Nooru is our strongest and she's had dealings with Sheik almost as long as I have. She may separate you two." She waved a couple waiting Gerudo forward. "My girls will take your horse and see she is fed and watered. Come. Nooru will have much to discuss with you inside."

"I very much doubt that," said Sheik, smoothly sarcastic as ever.

Djiin attempted to ignore him, addressing Link pointedly. "It might be best if you were introduced separately."

"Unless that's a vernacular these days?" Sheik said loudly. "'Discuss?'" (Link wasn't particularly talented when it came to social faux pas, but he sensed that Sheik was making a titanic effort to create one.) He was inspecting his bandaged fingers with feigned disinterest. "Not very imaginative, cheh."

Djiin shot him a furious look of pure loathing. "You, Sheikah, will do well to hold that tongue. Lest I cut it out."

"Mmm, threats." He rolled his blood-bright eyes expressively. "That's adorable coming from _you_."

Djiin whirled her horse about, startling a snort from the animal.

"You're in a poor position to test my patience, waif."

"Eh…" He shrugged his skinny shoulders impudently. "I've been in poorer positions."

"Dead is a _very_ poor position. Would you like to visit it?"

He seemed to think it over. Then he said something – probably rude – to her in Gerudo. Mataj and Nilif gasped – okay, _certainly_ rude – and looked to their leader with wide and fearful eyes, round and afraid over the edge of their veils. Djiin had gone deathly still on her stallion, fine cords of muscles binding and trembling disastrously beneath the cinnamon brown of her skin. Link – because he recognized a struck nerve when he saw it – tried furiously to catch Sheik's eyes and convey to him with immediate urgency just how much he needed to _shut up_. Sheik caught his eye and merely gave a small tilt of the head. It might have been an apology. It might have been another insult. Link would never know.

"Get him off that _beast_ and bind his hands!" Djiin spat to her underlings.

Sheik was forcibly ousted from his saddle blanket and pinned down by three nervous Gerudo girls. Restraining him somewhat unnecessarily, they wound quite an excessive amount of rope around his wrists. By the time they finished, most of Sheik's arms up to his elbows were wrapped in rope. The girls looked a bit embarrassed about it. Sheik didn't comment, however, because Djiin dismounted, making the courtyard shiver with her rage. She crossed the sand between them in four long strides and grabbed the Sheikah's arm, jerking him forward until she was near enough to make Sheik arch his back to lean away from her. Then, with her free hand, she reached up and delicately fisted her hand in the excess folds of his facemask at the neck.

One Gerudo guarding Link gasped and covered her eyes.

Sheik's current red eyes drifted incrementally to the hand near his ear, then back to his assailant. "Djiin," he said very reasonably. "I'm not sure that's a threat you're qualified to make, cheh."

"And _that's_ not a judgment _you're_ qualified to make," she replied stonily. Djiin's expression couldn't have been colder if she'd held a blade to his throat. "Now, you're going to stop acting like you have say in what happens. You're going to respect that you're beaten, Sheikah, and you're going to do it in sweet, sweet silence even if I have to gag you to get that silence. Do you understand me?"

He lowered his chin slightly; ducking into the cloth at his throat so only those blood splash eyes were visible and glaring through thick white-blond bangs. Her precarious grip on his mask persuaded Sheik to hold still, but not to be quiet. "You have no idea what you're doing, Djiin. Really," he told her with a frigid cold that chilled even the desert heat. "You cannot keep us here."

"Unless what?" she sneered.

"You just can't," he said a little arrogantly. And, Link realized, that was significant.

Sheik couldn't lie.

Fire flashed through Djiin's eyes, a knee-jerk fury that lit her irises like furnaces and with a snarl she backhanded the seer to the ground. In the deafening silence there was the sound of ripping cloth and suddenly Sheik was doubled up in the sand at Djiin's feet, his head curled in like a stricken animal. Djiin stood over him with this half frightened, half exhilarated look on her face that could only be described as blood-lust. Link twitched forward reactively and two Gerudo leapt forward to stop him, one grabbing his arm gently and it was her frightened eyes, not her saber, that stopped him from going.

"_Sheikah to nan nai za,_" she begged him. "_Doe nan nai."_

"You cannot look on his face," Mataj whispered. "It is…forbidden."

Her own honey-colored eyes were fixed fearfully on Link. Almost every other Gerudo had turned her eyes away now but Sheik wasn't unmasked. Djiin must have shifted her grasp at the last moment; it was his tunic she'd torn, ripped the sleeve from the shoulder down to his wrist, laying bare the arm beneath it. Link felt that he was missing something in the significance of that because the seer was breathing sharp and fast, air trembling as he sucked it through his teeth.

Djiin tilted her head, scrutinizing her work. "Hmm…nothing sacred about _this_ flesh," she sneered.

"You're pathetic as you are petty," Sheik told her coldly.

"Oh? This from a spiteful ghost of a Sheikah?" She laughed as she stepped away from him. "You are diminished, Sheik. Your time and usefulness spent utterly. It's at an end."

"Brave words when I'm bound and without magic," the seer spat.

"Be angry all you like, sand scrunt. Your friend comes with us."

Sheik barked with laughter. "You'll regret _that_ more than even this spectacle. _Allah'shaa_!" His eyes flickered tellingly to Link. "Your Gerudo have no _idea_ what they're trying to harness there."

"We've harnessed you, haven't we?" Djiin squatted down to speak eye-to-eye. Sheik glared as she smiled playfully, flicking a shank of blond hair from his eyes. "The wildest creature ever to crawl out of the bloody fields of the Realm, filthy and alone and disgraced. If we've caught you, what is a Hylian boy-thing? Nothing."

"And that doesn't frighten you?" Sheik hissed. "That there is something out there powerful enough to spend my Power? That what chases us will come straight here?"

"We need not fear what you do," she said scornfully.

"You don't know what to fear!" Sheik spat. "If you did, you'd have never dared lay a hand on me _or_ him and I do mean him, Djiin, him most of all."

Djiin grabbed Sheik by his other arm next and ripped the other sleeve clean off this time. He cried out like she'd struck him a physical blow and froze awkwardly, like a startled cat. He didn't seem to know how to react, he just knelt there, breathing fast, eyes wide and horrified. It was eerie on a man Link knew to be deadly. Djiin just laughed at the seer and climbed to her feet, drawing her saber from her hip and swinging it delicately.

"The rest of your people are waiting, Sheik..." She moved toward him. "It's them _you_ should fear."

Link gasped and tried to bull his way past the girls, but they were as dainty as Gorons, though it took three of them to hold him back. They seemed – absurd as it sounded – protective, all yelling and pleading he remain where he was while their leader butchered his companion. Sheik lifted his head like someone realizing something awful, expression stricken and dark. His eyes swam with something the Ordonian had recognized once in the eyes of an imp.

_'Respect old magic!'_ Midna was shrieking in his head. '_Do you have any idea what he's given?'_

"Please," Mataj implored him, panting as she viced his arm with hers. "Please do not."

Link _snarled_ at her.

She was so startled, she recoiled and let go. The split second was more than enough and quicker than a greased fox, he twisted out of his captor's startled hands darted past them. He was at full speed when he slammed into Djiin, hitting her so hard he took her right off her feet, over Sheik's head and into the sand opposite him. She yelled, raging as Link expertly slammed her sword hand over and over until the saber spun out of her grasp. Then he sprang off her like a cat off a viper, darting and snatching the free blade from the ground.

"Get him! Get him!" she was shrieking, but she spoke out of ignorance.

Mataj reached Link first and rushed him head on, not understanding that her executioner side-swing was moving through molasses. Link disarmed her so fast she actually stopped and stared at her empty hand before Link elbowed her to her ground and put the edge of his stolen weapon to her throat. The once-knight smiled politely at the fallen Gerudo and all the others gave a serious second thought to their own ideas of attacking. Djiin seemed to be remembering that a seer – who can't lie, remember – had just told her that it was Link she should have been afraid of.

Sheik's eyes were grinning, flashing wicked, knowing light.

"The ancient hero earned the rite," he reminded him.

Link hadn't forgotten for even an instant.

**Author's Note:**

_Oh God! Look! A new chapter! It's a sign of the apocalypse! But no, seriously, I'm sorry I took so long but I had shit for ideas and now I only have crap instead. Crap is writable at least so bear with me if you can. Hahaha! But I finished and this rather lengthy chapter is my present to you. Merry Christmas and I apologize for the typos I know are hiding in there. Thank you again to __**Chaotic Serenity**__. I wasn't lying when I said I was inspired. Also a heartfelt 'thank you' to__** Hiei17**__ for being there for forever and __**Dust Traveler**__…because you make me feel better about being a hopeless sap. Thanks._


	12. Run

Run

_During the Age of Rising, the decade preceding the Age of Twilight,_

_political corruption led to the exile of nearly twenty noble families; one notable case _

_being the exile of Sir Tael of Medley, his wife Aryll, and their infant son. During this time_

_no innocent was spared the will of the Senate and they, like so many others before them,_

_were lost in the dark places of Hyrule. _

_- Chronicle of the 3__rd__ Age_

"You know," Ilia says appreciatively, "if you wanted an excuse to take your shirt off around me, you didn't have to be so elaborate."

Link shoots her a dirty look, which loses most of its effect because he's on his knees in the dirt and he has, indeed, lost his shirt. She would not typically tease him about it, but having been merrily dragged from her bedroom window at the near crack of dawn to come and see a plot of damp dirt has put her in a slightly vengeful spirit. That she's still in her night things has something to do with it as well. He tells her to 'shh' and returns his attentions to the freshly tilled soil, dark and soft around the baby spouts he's spent all morning tucking into it.

He's on his hands and knees at the edge of garden, hands buried in the newly turned earth up to his wrists, so it seems his arms end in muddy nubs in the dirt. Ilia isn't sure what to think about this, that maybe he's testing the temperature of the soil but that doesn't explain why he's taken his shirt off – he hates the cold after all. She watches him for a moment, but he doesn't move or indicate to her that he plans to do anything besides sit. Ilia uncrosses her legs and recrosses them, reversed this time, and sits back against the base of his house. Her bare foot bounces a little in the air.

"What are you doing?" she inquires after a couple quiet moments.

He ignores her and goes on working, humming to himself. He's closed his eyes and looks for all the world like he's about to nod off.

"Link?" she tried again, giggling. "I'm cold. I'm hungry. Your garden can wait twenty minutes. Let's go have breakfast and come ba – _oh by the gods!_"

She's lunged to her feet and stares in open-mouth delight and terror. Before her very eyes frothy-leafed vines curl and spin themselves from the earth, twine up the wooden stakes he's set. White blooms spread open like hundreds of tiny mouths. The seedlings thrust themselves up, bursting into fat green orbs that balloon and yellow until the stalks bow down and hang low with ripe tomatoes. Seconds in and there's enough food in the once barren plot to feed half the village for a week and she can't stop staring.

Link's face splits into the brightest grin and he looks eagerly up at her, eyes silver-blue bright and laughing. The air is heavy and trembles against her skin through her clothes, warm and alive and moving through and over her. There is a melody vibrating down the stem of every plant and buzzing through the ground beneath her feet, shivering up her calves, past her knees and up into the soft pit of her belly and the tight cavity of her chest where she's stopped breathing. Her best friend is still crouched in the dirt, looking like nothing so special as magician, but moving the earth to his song nevertheless.

"Link," she breathes, trembling. "Link, how did you do that?"

He laughs a little and pulls his hands out of the dirt. Instantly the song dies in her body and the ground is silent again and still. The garden is quiet, like the pulse of the world has just stopped, or slowed to a pace she can no longer feel. Link is dusting off his hands and looking pleased with himself.

"Link," she wavers, voice shuddering.

He looks up sharply at the tone and sees her face finally, the dawning fear and knocks over several of the new tomato plants to place his hands on her shaking shoulders. She covers her face with her hands.

"You…that was…" Her hands slide down, she stares vacantly at his chest. "Zelda taught you that, right? Please?"

He hesitates, drawing back as if she's pushed him.

"She didn't, did she?" she mutters, hand over her mouth. "_You_ did that. You. You've always been…ever since…" He backs away from her another step and for the first time she looks up. Sees his eyes. "Oh, Link. No. That's not what I –"

But he's gone, faster that a living thing should move and winging down the dirt path into the forest, a frantic and desperate sprint for the dark green. He's taken his shirt from the gate post, the hero's symbol. He leaves her standing there in her nightgown hating herself for all that she is and ever will be, because she's known it all her life what he is. She knows he won't come back with the tunic; he'll do with it what he did with the sword – trying to throw back the last bits of Twilight. Put them in the past where they can stagnate and dim instead of fester and bleed.

She tells the tomatoes she's sorry and the seedlings and the soil, then she gets up and goes back to the village.

Link doesn't come home. Ilia saw him start to run. She knows he's not going to stop now.

_-exhile-_

"Are you paying attention or not?"

Sheik's Sheikah accent (for what else could it be?) became slightly less pronounced when he was not paying attention. His Hylian didn't suffer any when he put it on or become less understandable, rather, just less correctly enunciated and it occurred to Link that Sheik seemed able to turn on and off his accent at will. He wondered if he'd lost his real accent, forgotten the sound of Sheikah tongues and put it on now only as homage to them? He wondered if he was slightly jealous.

Then Nilif lunged at him from his left and attempted to drive her saber through his ribcage with surprising enthusiasm.

He parried her and spun away from her momentum, letting the force of her blow carry her past him. Sheik had cut himself loose on Mataj's dropped saber but was making no move to help and was, in fact, inspecting the rips in his tunic. Link decided that was just a little rude, seeing how he'd gone through quite a bit of trouble to help him avoid being hacked to death by a saber-wielding Gerudo. Now that there were nearly eight of them Sheik was lollygagging while the Ordonian was hedged in by angry red-heads. He shot the seer a dirty look, but his companion merely shrugged a little.

"You initiated the rite. _I _can't have anything to do with it," he said tritely.

Link made a very rude gesture indeed, one that corrected the myth that heroes were not impolite from time to time.

"Well that's a generous offer, but I think any one of _them_ might take you up on it if you don't win," Sheik pointed out, mildly nodding to the pack of Gerudo edging him toward the middle of the courtyard.

Nilif attacked again, this time leaping in, pivoting and throwing herself into a whirling sidewinder of blades and bangles. Link sprang away, toppled, rolled, somersaulted back to his feet and was up in time to catch the hilt of her oncoming blade on the edge of his own. Again, reminding Link that the Gerudo were in no way as delicate as they appeared to be, she bulled into him so hard he actually slid back a couple feet in the soft sand before dropping his centre of gravity and stopping her. She swung her other blade at his ribs, but he twisted and grabbed her hand over the hilt and stopped it at harmless angle.

For a moment they wrestled like that, she unable to drive either blade home, he not letting her, both their arms trembling visibly from the strain of contending with the other. Over their crossed blades the woman beseeched him with her eyes.

"You ha're mah'king a miztake," she told him in hard to understand Hylian.

He grunted slightly to indicate he disagreed.

"We well not hurt you."

"Huh."

"Fighting h'only make e't worze."

"_Huh_."

She tried to drop her body to shove him back again, but the Ordonian was shorter than her and at one point he'd gotten quite good at wrestling creatures of boulder-like countenance. Because of this hard-won experience he knew that she was probably stronger physically, but she couldn't get her centre low enough while he, on the other hand…

"_Eeeeeei_!"

_Thud_!

Nilif didn't have time to figure out what happened or why, only that Link had done something and the result was her lying in the sand and missing her sword. She scrambled to her feet and the other Gerudo stared, looking rightly alarmed by now because Link was grinning a little. That happy crooked little grin that suggested he was trying to be humble, but not quite accomplishing the feat like he might have liked. Also, he now had two swords.

"Two down," Sheik reminded everyone, then backed up when the Gerudo shot him very dirty looks. "Sorry, cheh. Her fault. Not mine." He waved cheekily to Djiin who was looking a bit furious. "Ah, and I _do_ believe I get to say something to the effect of 'I told you so.' Yes? No? Nothing? Cheh, and here I never thought I'd manage to work this Path. Just goes to show what the right, ah, _words_ can do, hmm?"

"Shut up, Sheik! When your companion falls, so shall you!" she screeched, but the affect was mostly spoiled by the manic pitch of her voice.

Sheik grimaced. "Shaa…volume please."

"I'M GOING TO KILL YOU!"

"Ah, yes. That's nice. Link, are you almost finished over there?"

Two Gerudo were taking him simultaneously now, but he had two sabers – given, mismatched and stolen sabers – with which he was managing an awkward defense. Given that he'd never fought with sabers before, there were two of them, and he was bone _tired_, he thought he was doing pretty well for himself (also, that Sheik – when stripped of magic – got excessively chatty). He glared at the seer in a way that said quite clearly _'This is not easy, thank you'_.

Sheik nodded curtly. "Best pay attention."

He cursed silently and hop-skipped a nasty attempt at ham-stringing his left leg.

The two Gerudo fought like no opponents he'd yet had; striking and retreating in perfect synchrony, like a choreographed dance one struck high, the other low, one attacking, and one deflecting in deadly harmony. It was taking every ounce of his concentration to keep time with them, motion clicking past so fast he felt like he was guessing instead of reacting. Like the air was rushing across his skin, precognitive pressure, pushing him down, left, away and up. The world blurring into a mess of sensation and sound, silk and sabers.

Pulse, rhythm, sync.

Time.

One made a bold swipe at his throat that he swerved, striking away her partner's follow-up attack. They leapt at him. Blades fell around him like silver strings, whining, singing their song as they wove through the empty space around him. He moved through their rain-dance of weaponry with terrible confidence and agility, their movement coming to him like flashes before they contacted. The two woman pressed harder, faster, trying to land a blow and quite suddenly the twin with shorter hair let loose a growl and began to thrust recklessly, brutally seeking flesh.

Link felt the sand shivering beneath his boots, the dry breath of desert air on his skin, an indelible chatter moving through his bones. The two Gerudo lunged and he spun sharply, sweeping into in a tight circle, purloined sabers whipping round like liquid haloes of silver thread. Bedazzled by the deadly pirouette, they stopped short and raised blades to block; all their energy upon it…so Link dropped suddenly to all fours and kicked their feet from under them instead.

One toppled poorly and didn't recover quick enough. His blade flashed and her saber spun away into the sand as she screamed. A saber flat conking her soundly on the forehead and knocking her silly effectively stoppered the screeching, however. Those watching cringed a bit at the 'thunk'. She went limp and Link let her slump, kicking her saber to a safe distance.

"Three down!" Sheik reminded everyone and was glared at.

Link spun, dashed, then slide-tackled the other Gerudo, who obviously had never faced anything quite as randomly wild as an annoyed Ordonian. She missed him by miles and he slammed the hilt of his left-hand saber into her belly, stopping her dead and dropping her to the ground with a soft '_umf'_. She was unconscious before she hit the sand so Link caught her nicely and laid her down. The tally was four and something deeper than gut instinct told him that was all he needed to do here. Like de-ja-vu, he decided. Then he tossed his sabers to indicate surrender and stood to his feet.

"Four," Sheik said delicately. "Congratulations, Link. You're man enough to be a woman."

Link made and exceptionally crass gesture and Sheik seemed to grin a bit harder. The Gerudo gathered in the courtyard applauded a little, a gaggle of younger girls whooping and clapping while their older sisters looked on in solemn reverie. It was difficult to discern if his victory would have the desired affect. Who said the rite of the ancient hero even applied anymore? Either way, Link's vision was starting to double nicely. He hadn't slept in two nights, hadn't stopped fighting, riding or panicking alternately for two days and he knew very acutely that he didn't have another fight in him.

Well…sort of not.

Kind of.

"You fight well," said a voice.

Immediately there was a prickle running under his shirt and down his back, tangible as fire ants and Link had to work a bit not to wriggle. Her voice sizzled like water in a pan, burrowed into his skin and into the joints. After the sensation calmed, the once-ranch-hand turned about to find a woman in black standing demurely at his back. She hadn't been there before and she'd come up rather more quietly than he liked, but fighting and being acutely observant simultaneously weren't exactly skills he practiced. As it was, he just tilted his head and acquiesced. Being modest was a bit insulting to the semi-conscious Gerudo at this point.

His desert-born partner didn't share his manners, however.

"_Allah'shah_," Sheik blurted irritably. "As if we haven't already wasted all the daylight. That's dusk coming, you see. Not enough light to do anything worth doing. _Shaaa_! You have no idea what you and your lot have just done do you? No. Of course not. You never do. Just blunder into things and hope it all works out, cheh."

The woman eyed the disheveled Sheikah with something like fondness. Her eyes were familiar with him. "So chatty, Sheik. You must be low on magic."

"Do kindly wither and _die_ horribly, will you?"

She provided him a cool look. "I thought as much. You always did get temperamental when things didn't go your way."

"Then I'm most certainly the most temperamental creature on the planet because, in my experience, things never go my way," Sheik said grumpily. "And I have such _questions_ about the martial escort. I _told_ you lot not to put _her_ in charge of anything." He nodded angrily at Djiin. "But there you go. Don't listen to me, cheh, it's not like I see into the future or have divine knowledge of the Paths to come."

The women lifted her brows delicately, eyes gently amused over the edge of her veil. "Djinn makes a fine leader…though it seems you bring out the worst in her from time to time. Can she be faulted for an opinion shared by most of the Gerudo tribe, Sheik of the Sheikah?"

Sheik made a rude noise. "Yes. Very good. Now that we've made with the niceties could we kindly get to the essential issue of your not listening to me? It's rather important that you stop not listening. Soon, preferably."

"Because listening to _you_ has always ended well in the past," snapped Djinn hotly. "Got your kind obliterated. Forgive us learning from their mistakes –"

"_I'm not talking to you_!" Sheik snarled suddenly, spinning on the Gerudo woman so fast, she started backward.

Link didn't react. Just held very still for a moment, watching Sheik through the corner of his eye.

For just and instant there was the edge of infinity in the Sheikah's face, burning like the centre of the sun behind his irises, black hole raging and forever. Djinn shrank like a kitten before him and Link raised his eyebrows a bit. The young man wasn't entirely sure, but he was going to take it as matter of fact that Sheik was not the twenty-something he looked. The fact this didn't worry him over much presented something of a conundrum to him though. This kind of thing should still bug him just a little, even after all his adventuring. The woman in black didn't seem perturbed, however, just patient.

"Sheik," she admonished. "Don't."

He turned back to her, eyes rolling. "Oh, shaa. None of that. Don't patronize me by pretending we're familiar. We're not. You're a priestess, not a seer."

"For a creature so gifted by the goddesses," she said gently, "you'd think some of their grace would manifest in their servant."

Sheik made a little noise of rage. "We don't – _Sha_! Alright! One –," he hissed, pointing a finger. "I don't serve any goddesses and you know that." He presented another finger. "Two – there's a Shadow following us, an old time fiend from Ganondorf's reign and it's not in any way shape or form going to play nice for it's old master's old people." Link heard an outbreak of frightened muttering. "Three –," He frowned. "Actually, no. Sorry. Never mind. That was it."

The priestess inclined her head slightly. "Listen to you," she murmured. She moved toward the seer who stood stock still, glaring as she drew near. She reached up gingerly, as if to touch his hair, but Link noted critically that she didn't actually do so. She smiled sympathetically. "Still as angry as you've ever been, _mee'ha_. The years must burn on your shoulders with that much despair."

"It's been a long time," Sheik retorted. "I've grown accustomed to the weight, cheh."

"Your race burning?" she inquired. "One can grow accustomed to that?"

Link growled reflexively.

Sheik didn't look away though, like a man staring down the mouth of a ragged red hole in hell. "No," he mildly, "actually. One can't."

There was a pregnant beat of silence.

At last the woman spoke, but she was looking at Link this time. "I would speak with you."

"You will _not_," said Sheik obnoxiously. The sucking black was gone from his eyes again, like curtains whisked closed.

She gave the seer a blistering look this time. "Don't you patronize me, Sheik. I cannot trust single word from you, when so many things are True in your mouth, so many Paths woven before you like fibers on a sea of tapestry, no. I'll speak to your friend. Not you."

"Listen to me! Just listen!" Sheik said urgently, waving his hands like could curb the hostilities with them. "There is a Shadow following us. It's strong. Incredibly strong and it's old. It's _so_ old. And angry. Your girls cannot stand against this evil and it's coming for Link. Just for him. It's got nothing to do with me this time, so tossing me out won't solve the problem, just make it worse. Now. You can do one of two things for us. You can either let us go, right now. Let us ride away and take the Shadow away from fortress." He didn't take his eyes off the woman before him, his entire posture rigid and pressing. "Or – _or_ you can help me, cheh. Give me enough of your own Power to hold him off. Link can't do it alone and magic is the only thing that holds him."

She, again, nodded coolly. "I will consider it."

"_Nooru_," Sheik hissed.

She sighed. "We have until sunset, do we not? And we are not without defenses, the useful kind, Sheik. I set the wards myself. It will buy you some of the time you claim to need." Nooru gestured to the sandstone building nearby. "I will speak with your companion. If your story is true, if he convinces me, I will lend you my strength to fend off this threat. Because – given that you are not lying cleverly – I know anything that chases _you_ is destruction itself."

Sheik breathed loudly through his nose, just to get it across he disapproved, then moved to Link's side. No one stopped him and he drew along side the Ordonian, dipping his head near enough for secrets. Link tensed, knowing these might be the last fragments of soothsayer advice he would get before facing Nooru alone. Sheik cleared his throat a bit, glanced around, then leaned into Link's ear.

"Don't eat the pomegranates."

Link had time to blink.

Then Sheik was twenty feet away, walking off briskly in the direction of their holstered horses. Somehow, the Hero of Twilight found himself resignedly unsurprised.

-_exile_-

"Stop fidgeting."

"I have a thing crushing the air out of my god-forsaken lungs."

"Yes, but your bum looks smashing."

Shad would have never, in four billion years of Hyrulian life, said such a thing and lived if not for the aforementioned fact Ashei's ribs were crimped up two sizes smaller by a fancy gown and corset, impairing her ability to move. As it was, she shot him such a cyanide-laced stare he physically felt the first layer of skin around his eyes peel away. It was worth it, but this was probably the only remotely amusing victory he would have today. By the looks of it, the Hyrulian Senate was looking particularly stuffy and that was saying something if you took into account Shad's own degree of stuffiness.

It wasn't that they were corrupt, exactly, but rather that several decades of being in charge had made them overtly opinionated. There was historic reason for this, Shad read the books actually. They went like this:

'_After the fall of Ganondorf, during the Age of Darkness, the Princess of Destiny took the throne and a wave of political reform swept the country. In response to the former King's inaction against the threat of now dead Gerudo advisor, the people called for the formation of a people's government to pillow the authority of the Royal Family. Thus, the Hyrulian Senate was first called into being and under their wisdom and that of the Princess of Destiny there was peace and justice throughout the land. An Age of Light, the 2__nd__ Age.'_

That the current age was now recorded as the Age of _Twilight_, Shad found highly appropriate.

Queen Zelda herself sat at the head of the table, looking pristine as only she was capable, wearing an heirloom satin gown, the richly embroidered evening dress belonging to her great grand mother. Shad saw the strategy. The Princess of Destiny was held in the heart of every Hyrulian and like wise her long lost Hero of Time; that she was shamelessly playing off that nostalgia for Link's benefit warmed Shad's heart considerably. Nevertheless, she looked markedly wan, as though she hadn't let herself a proper sleep in some time.

Maybe children's songs had some truth in them.

As the members of the council filed in and made themselves comfortable about the senate floor, Ashei fidgeted again beside him. The gown belonged to Telma, of course. Ashei owned no gowns. Her hair she'd allowed to hang freely, dark and shining to pool in the dip of her left collarbone. Shad took obscure pleasure in the stunned silence she'd affected upon the gathered nobility, but she was nevertheless a swordsman in a dress. When it became evident they would be taking an extraordinarily long time being seated, she leaned in to whisper.

"Are you sure you've got your facts right?"

He glowered sideways at her. "For the millionth bloody time, yes."

"And you…"

"Yes."

"You're sure?"

"Dash it all, Ashei! Yes!"

"Ahem," someone coughed politely from up front. Shad and his lady knight came quickly to attention, the councilors having settled. The man who'd spoken cleared his throat once, reprovingly, then went on. "The Hyrulian Senate is hereby called to order. Her Majesty the Queen presiding." He nodded to Zelda who inclined her head incrementally. Shad thought the move looked somewhat wooden from where he stood. "The Lower Courts have requested this meeting of the council to settle a matter brought forth in the recent tragedy of Snow Peak Pass."

Shad felt Ashei's breathing grow shallow, from something besides the corset he imagined. Her eyes fell low to the floor, watching wagons burn in memory on the flagstones.

"The Merchant Courts have been unable to settle the case regarding Link of Ordon in the burning of the Bather merchant train the night before last. As he is not here to speak for himself or offer proof of his innocence, and the evidence against him is speculative and circumstantial court law seems to call for dismissal or suspension of the hearing until Link of Ordon is apprehended. However, the plaintiff appealed the matter to the Hyrulian Senate. We, in light of these heinous crimes, found it prudent to approve Mr. Blather's appeal."

Zelda's mouth thinned very slightly.

Ashei growled in the back of her throat.

Shad noted that Theo Bather (the head merchant) wasn't even present. A sure sign the man himself wasn't instigating this so much the political forces behind trying and convicting the Hero of Twilight. He glanced somewhat cynically up at the elderly senator. He'd always figured something like this might happen; had tried once or twice to warn Link about the politics of being a Hero, but he'd never imagined this. Zelda's power seemed, to the eyes of the people, so absolute in her popularity many oft forgot there was even a Senate at all, or that they'd once attempted to throttle the strength from the Royal Family…just one generation back actually.

Some rumored that the guilt and anxiety of losing the throne and the power of her bloodline had driven Zelda's mother mad and into an early grave. If the look on Zelda's face – and the recent political crusade of national reform – were any indication she was of similar opinion. Nevertheless, the Senate had been called.

"As always, the Council is tool of the crown." The senator looked about the gathered nobility, standing quietly and curiously in the shadows of the Senate Hall. "But during the convening of this senate the power of law lies with us." Shad felt something prickle along the back of his neck as the man said this. Zelda's absolute stillness seemed an unnatural restraint on her part, an effort against reaction. The man glanced briefly her way. "That said, we shall begin."

Shad stepped smartly forward, bowing.

"The defense offers that Link of Ordon is neither a knight, knight errant, nor under the employ of the Queen in any fashion and her Majesty's Guard cannot, therefore, be sued under the Merchant Courts for reparations of any kind," he said rather quickly.

A woman sitting in the wings to his left chuckled.

"This we know, young scholar; that was assumed during the first trial. Theo Bather has no quarrel with the Queen, I'm certain."

Shad blushed a little as murmured laughter circled the room. "Ah, well. Then I'll get straight to my real defense. Link of Ordon is, quite simply, a victim of prejudice. As said by yourself, kind sir, the evidence against him is circumstantial and inconclusive at best. Furthermore, Link himself has established a reputation – known by all of Hyrule – as an honorable and _moral_ man. The slaughter of children, your grace, is not something within Link's capacity to do. I assert that the plaintiff is acting – and not unreasonably in the light of his loss – on emotional biases. He seeks to blame someone, again with good reason, but is merely attacking the nearest available suspect."

He waved to Ashei, who lifted her chin a little higher.

"Sir Ashei was declared not guilty by the Lower Courts, by right of her having alibi when the fire started. That is understood, senator. However, of Master Bather I have to ask, why did he allow blame to so easily slide from her and not Link?"

"You are well spoken," said the woman, tone un-amused this time. "But the matter of the _Ordonian's_ reputation is not why Mr. Bather appealed to us. Rather that a man, neither hired by Zelda nor a citizen of this country, is suspected of having killed members of his family and friends and he did not wish to see the matter dismissed on technicality. Sir _Ashei_ was acquitted because she did her job properly, defending the Bather merchants and deserves no punishment. Link of Ordon, however, has abandoned those he swore to protect and offered no reason as to his sudden inconvenient departure."

"Yeah! Because he might be hurt or dead," Ashei spat.

The woman smiled politely. "Kindly keep your outbursts to yourself, Lady Ashei."

"He's not guilty." Her eyes flashed, voice bitter. "You just want him to be, you old fools."

"Control your witness," said another senator breezily.

Shad shot his companion a warning look and she settled, bristling, back into silence. After a moment he circled away toward the center of the floor, pacing as he went on.

"I understand, senators. Don't misunderstand my intentions. I'm not here to heap you with pathos. The past honors of a man have no bearing on his present crimes. I understand, certainly. However, I would simply like to clarity something, if I may?"

The speaker for the Senate nodded slowly, somewhat warily. "You may."

"Theo Bather is a Hylian merchant, living in the district of Lon Lon?"

"Yes."

"Link, as I understand it, is from Ordon. Formerly employed on a ranch which engages in profitable cooperation with Lon Lon cattle trade, am I correct?"

The woman senator was frowning. "That is true, scholar."

"Then it stands to reason that Link had no motivation to destroy those animals or their owners."

"That has no bearing on our ruling, I'm afraid."

"Link of Ordon is no longer employed on said ranch."

"He has no loyalties to its well being, I'm sure."

Shad blinked around the room, as though puzzled by the sudden onslaught of eagerly slanderous voices. "Hmm, well, that's entirely conjecture. You're right. Never mind," he agreed, glancing about to the gathered nobles. Several were frowning. "A second query, though: Am I therefore to understand that Mr. Bather appealed to the Senate…because he wants to see Link of Ordon tried _in absentia_?"

"Correct."

"So, his appeal is effectively an attempt to circumvent the Thirty-Second Ruling? According to the Law of Red Dragons, any person, be he Hylian or alien, tried by the Lower Court for serious criminal charges cannot be tried while the suspect is not present. This was a law passed by the King of Red Dragons himself. It can, however, be avoided by appealing to the Senate, who reserve the right to pass such rulings on suspects of non-Hylian descent. Because Link is Ordonian that is the only reason he is being tried without his presence here today. Is my interpretation of these events accurate?"

The Speaker nodded again, neutrally this time. "Yes, I suppose it is."

"Ah," Shad replied, nodding thoughtfully. "I thought so. Well then, let me put forth something not previously considered by the Senate. What if Link of Ordon, is not really of Ordon?"

There was long stretch of silence.

"That's…certainly a wild assertion, Shad of Meadow Lark."

"Tread carefully," added the woman.

Shad smiled and launched easily into yet another of his books:

"During the Third Age– following the death of her Majesty, the Princess of Destiny – the _former_ Senate passed many unsavory laws. They – unlike yourselves, understand this is merely a history lesson, merely for clarification. Just for clarification – _they_ sought to usurp power by undermining the power of the Crown. They banished many noble and honorable families for false charges of sedition and treachery. However, her Majesty," Here he bowed to Zelda. "has done everything in her power to reverse these laws. Laws that dismantled Hyrule's army, exiled her knights, and left the country woefully unprepared for the Siege of Twilight."

The woman spoke up again, her elderly eyes glittering unkindly at him. "Do get to your point, scholar. Or shall we sit here while you teach us the entire history of our country back to the Creation?"

Shad smiled apologetically. "Of course. Of course. I would merely submit that there is evidence suggesting that Link of Ordon may have ties with one of these exiled noble families. The laws passed during the Age of Rising have all been reversed, so any of those nobles have the right to return to Hyrule with full title. It also mandates that all such persons be given fair chance to present evidence for their nobility before the Queen. As Lady Ashei and her colleagues have ascertained from their friendship with him, Link may have such rights . Should Link be of such descent, then it overturns the Senate's power. He's a citizen and cannot be tried _in absentia_. It's against the law."

The room burst into a flurry of wild conversation, fantastical, whimsical, uncontrollable gossip. All at once the quiet gathering of nobility became liken unto a gaggle of excitable schoolgirls – Link of Ordon an exiled Hyrulian noble? Well, he _certainly_ had that look about him didn't he? That natural air of the superior bred? And didn't that _just_ explain why he turned down the knighting? Only a betrayed son of a banished noble would _dare_. Which family do you suppose? An estranged relative of ours, perhaps? Isn't this just _exceedingly_ interesting? All the while the Senate speaker roared for quiet and was summarily ignored.

Shad and Ashei exchanged a look. Nothing more. Just a look.

Zelda seemed to be smiling just slightly when she spoke.

"It seems that Master Shad has provided an excellent point," she remarked blandly to the baffled members of the council. "Under the Senate's judiciary law, is he not provided time to compile his case in light of this new complication?"

They conferred. Shad sweated. Ashei gritted her teeth audibly. Zelda, who probably knew law better than anyone in the room, examined her nails with the air of bored royalty (an air she seldom took on, save to make a point). At least the speaker turned to Shad and, giving him such a look to suggest he should crawl somewhere and die, called a three day recess. Court was dismissed…again.

Ashei came along side Shad as he strode out the doors, sweating gently, looking pale.

"So," she began casually. "Any truth in what you said?"

"Not at all," he laughed shakily, looking vaguely panicked. "Just a bloody lot of educated speculation and an exceptionally lucky technicality. Now I have three days to make some truth out of it. In all honesty, I just hope the old boy shows up with a very rousing story about chasing the real baby-burning bastard and hacking his head off."

"Why Shad," Ashei appraised him thoughtfully and in such a way as to make the scholar blush (though he couldn't for the life of him decide why). "I never knew you had it in you."

_-exile-_

When Link was very young, he used to climb onto Ilia's roof at night and hum her to sleep. She rewarded his efforts with pieces of butter toffee from her father's larder and – less frequently – girlish kisses that drove Link sputtering and blushing off her roof to the brook. Squatting in the water, scrubbing his befouled six-year-old tongue while Ilia screamed 'You big baby! You big fat meanie-head!' at him from her bedroom window, was the extent of Link's classic romantic experiences. As he got older, kissing Ilia was no longer an acceptably innocent business transaction and he had to settle for the sugar cookies and caramel-snaps, lest Bo catch them at it and wallop him off the roof.

He still visited her bedroom window on occasion, because Ilia remained a loyal insomniac for years and Link knew the sound of a lullaby. She knew nothing but sadness and an echo vibrating meanly in the empty corners of a three-person house. Sometimes, when she asked, he laid his head against her back, and hummed his three note song into her skin until the vibrato and kindness soothed her to sleep. This was the extent of his unclassical romantic experience, but he was still too young to know it back then. Later, Ilia would confess that during her most hormonal times her dreams had the smell of sticky summer honeysuckle and someone coaxing low harmonic chords deep in her bones.

(She never told that to Link directly, but Sera overheard her tell Uli and told Jaggle who drunkenly leaked it to Link who was very, very embarrassed for a good long while.)

Eventually Ilia started closing her window to him and he found other things to do than hum half-remembered songs. She never said why she didn't need him to help her sleep anymore and as a nicety he never inquired of it. It was the same unspoken understanding that prevented them from addressing why he was the only boy with pointed ears in Ordon. Where the bodies of their once parents had been laid to rest. What woman sang that lullaby before Link gave it to Ilia. (_Who are you?_) The details of these mysteries remained encrypted in the puzzling adult idiom of cleared throats, abrupt silence and averted gaze.

But that was growing up wasn't it? Windows closing and the loss of lullabies and butter toffee? Mirrors breaking, wicked giggles silenced, apples – all lost in the ether? Either way, the point he was getting around to making – silently of course, while following the Gerudo priestess to depths unknown – was that he was entirely ineffective reacting to interested women. Midna often insisted he was amorously dim as a dying campfire, but that wasn't exactly true. In perfect honestly he was just irreparably old fashioned, and a little shy, and – yes – probably a hopeless romantic, but he wasn't dim.

He knew exactly what half the women escorting him would do given half a second in a dark room with him.

But moving on…

The building Nooru led him through seemed to be a small shrine, a main chapel-like room burning incense below the engraved sigil of single weeping eye, giant and omniscient in the wall over the alter. In the groove of the tear drop, a fountain poured water down the rock face into a shallow pool below. The church atmosphere ended there however. Most of the shrine floor had been torn up to uncover the soft earth below. There plants grew in the freshly turned earth below the alter. Small troughs of violently colored plants flowered on the ground near the water, the scent of familiar medicinal herbs coming strong to him, flooding the back of his throat with their heavy smell, hot and heady. His fingertips itched.

"_Kiz'shi_," said Nooru, startling Link out of his thoughts. She was watching him, her great pale eyes smiling faintly and he all at once realized she was quite young. Late twenties, perhaps, at the most and yet every word from her mouth ran through him like those of an ancient mother. He felt…juvenile when she spoke to him. "It's used as a pain reliever and a relaxant. The orange one there by your ankle is a kind of poultice for burns. The little red ones can lower fever."

Link examined the plants curiously.

"You know something of growing things. I can see it in you." She nodded. "Come. We can speak here."

She stepped down into the chapel room, stepping deftly among the plants and kneeling down before a long tray of sprouting greenery. He didn't follow. The soft murmur of falling water drew his attention back to the single great eye on the wall. The force of its silence and its stare seemed to warm the back of his neck, set his nerves on edge like a passing Poe. It felt both foreign and familiar; it reminded him of something, someone. An image of Sheik, raging and with eyes deep as grief would take a man, came suddenly to him and he felt something crawl down his spine.

"This shrine, long ago, belonged to members of the Sheikah," Nooru said, as if to answer a question he hadn't asked. She reached for a small bowl of water and a washrag. Gingerly she soaked it then squeezed it over the tiny sprouts by her knees, beads of water running down their tiny green stems. "Once, when our peoples did not loathe one another, they came here to See and honor their Truth, the only god they ever had. They helped build our cities and befriended our kings and we lived in peace for a long time, young Hylian."

She rewet her rag and squeezed over the next row of plants.

"Then their leader took them out of the desert, led them into Hyrule and they became shadows there in the land of the goddesses' chosen. They lived this way until the Great War. Then the shadows became nothing, became memories, became dust. All of them, even their great immortal leader – a creature so fierce even Ganon once feared his magicks – wandered nameless and mad through the Wastelands, speaking to the dead and seeking the cracks in between worlds through which to flee."

She wrung her towel dry and let her hand hover there, suspended.

"This foolish leader brought much sorrow to the world," she murmured. "Far reaching and endless sorrow."

In the quiet that followed, Link found himself backed up against the nearest sandstone pillar, head tilted against it, listening. Listening to her felt like home, like Bo telling bedtime stories. He shook it off and stepped down to the shrine room floor, soft dirt and sand rather than stone, and circled the edge of the garden. If she noticed his late approach, she didn't remark upon it, merely went on watering her plants in deft, gentle movements. After a long, long stint of quiet the urgency of nightfall prompted Link to venture toward the Gerudo woman, taking a seat across from her. Still, she ignored him, watering her plants.

"Sheik isn't lying," he said finally.

She looked up at him. "I know that, child. He's a seer. They don't lie, that I know." Link felt himself scowl reflexively at her tone, but she smiled when he did. "Ah, there it is. Your eyes, too, are old. More clearly seen in anger is your true age, young one, don't be upset. I'm trying to judge your character when I make you angry." When he didn't react she went on. "Some people move through Time a little fast, some a little slow, and some live so powerfully in the moment they are not limited to what their eyes may tell them. To me, you see much more than you should, clever coyote, than one who stagnates in the river of time."

He gave her a long, openly uncomprehending stare.

"Ah, I see." Those pale eyes came up at last, almost amused. "This isn't a magic you acknowledge. How could you, though, it being so instinctive…or are you ashamed?" She set her bowl aside and stood up, stepping through to garden to crouch on the balls of her feet before him. She took his hand brusquely, with such easy force he forgot to keep his distance. She turned his palm up and ran her fingers over the worn lines there, fingertips tracing the faded webbing, impartial to the dirt and sweat. Her hands felt cool and smooth. "There's a long, long history in our hands, _kade'bhal_. More than any mortal should be allotted."

She let him go and sat back.

"I will tell you a story. Let me tell it and then when it is through tell me if your loyalty still lies with your nameless guide. If it does, I will give you my magic to do with as you will. But you must hear my whole story, all of it, or I will cast you to your darkness, _kade'bhal_. You and your cursed companion, do you understand?"

He nodded.

"Very well, I told you how the Sheikah came to us, all those decades past. When Hyrule was yet new and the Three Sisters still spoke to the world in voices that could be understood, they came out of the Deep Desert, braving the Wastelands and dead men's sand storms. Strange red-eyed and fair they were, yet untouched by the sun and familiar with shadow as ghosts with darkness. They fought in stealth and speed and deception, worshiped strange gods and practiced stranger magicks and we Gerudo prepared to make war upon them in the Desert Colossus."

Link, absurdly, found himself comparing Nooru to Ashei. Upon finding that he'd relaxed – as he did at the campfire – he fought silently to reprimand this behavior and look sufficiently distrusting. If Nooru noticed, again, she didn't remark upon it.

"It was at this brink they sent their emissary, a single man to meet our war party and he told us his Name. That Name has been stripped out of the world since that time when he gave it to us, but you know that man as Sheik of the Sheikah and to give such a gift is beyond call for peace. It's offering of friendship. How he knew that our leader, the priestess Mischa A'buula, would not use his gift against his people, we did not know then, for he gave it to her alone and – in essence – subjected himself to her will. In the centuries that passed we came to understand the workings of his people and their ways and I know now that Shiek never gambled that Path. He knew the heart of Mischa before he ever met her, and the heart of the Gerudo themselves as they would be."

She breathed a little deeper and settled her hands on her knees, at rest. His forehead itched, at the hairline and Link felt that perhaps there was some subtle magic being worked here, but of a kind he couldn't name. It seemed static though, not invasive; it wasn't meant to influence him in anyway. Nooru seemed trance-like now, speaking in a slower, even older tone as if from a distance.

"It came to be known that the Sheikah did not follow a leader in the traditional sense of the word. In the beginning of their peoples, they merely seemed to follow the wind and the wind brought them together as a race. They followed this unseen force, this guiding energy, never naming it as anything in the order of the Goddesses Three, of whom they knew nothing and instead they came to believe they followed something greater than a mere deity. The followed, Truth. Of all peoples under the sun, the Sheikah were without a doubt the most intuitive and innately magical." She paused reflectively. "They do say, however, there was once a Lost Tribe who claimed higher mastery of magic…but few know what became of them."

Link resisted the urge to blink. It felt like a giveaway somehow.

"Truth is, indeed, a powerful force but it can only alight on those unfettered by the falsehoods inherent in this world ruled by men. The Sheikah, in fact, follow the visions of their children." Nooru raised two hands to indicate the veil on her face. "My people wear these as symbol of modesty or tradition. In the culture of a Sheikah, children were considered temples of Truth and as such were required to hide themselves from the sight of others. Until age ten, those gifted with Sight in the Third Eye of the spirit – the Eye of Truth as it came to translate – hid all their body and face. Upon losing the Sight, they were permitted to cast off their coverings and join their people in other services to the tribe."

She lowered her hands, eyes steady over the edge of dark silk.

"You will notice, I'm sure, that Sheik follows these same mandates though he is most certainly not a child. Though the Sheikah did not follow a leader, Sheik as their eldest and most experienced, was the one they sought guidance from. Traditionally, Sheikah soothsayers are girls. Sheik was not. Traditionally, they lose their Sight at ten. Sheik did not. Traditionally, all Sheikah age and die." She paused significantly though she need not have. Link had drawn the logical conclusion some time ago. "Sheik, obviously, did not."

Again the image of Sheik's eyes burned up in Link's memory, that long line stretching into infinity behind his gaze. He thought of the Spirit Ordonna and waking up suddenly with the feeling that he'd worn these clothes before, that he'd held this sword before, knew its weight already, struck down this same mindlessly vicious darkness in some dream he'd lived a hundred years before now. He decided that this didn't surprise him. If such a creature, such an aberration, as he could exist then what stretch of imagination was it that Sheik might not die? Link noticed that his hands were fisted on his knees a little later than he approved of and Nooru was watching him with that same unwavering attention.

"You know a little, I think, of what it means to have a memory so long," she remarked carefully. "I too, know something of it, though in my own way I would never want to have the gift and curse that Sheik bears. Such old souls bear horrific scars, young one, be glad you cannot reach beyond the veil into what you have been before."

Link stared, again, uncomprehendingly.

She sighed.

"What pain your wildness must have brought you, to deny it so ardently," she murmured. "Never mind it. I speak of your friend, not us two. Sheik was their leader and had been so for nearly eighty years when he came to us. He told Mischa that he'd Seen a great war coming and intended to lend a hand in bringing about a swifter end to it, lest it spread like rot across the Realm and into the deserts. He'd Seen, he told her, the eradication of all tribes, the Sheikah, the Gerudo, and nameless others. "

Again, Link fought not to blink, struck by memories of strange peoples moving in twilight, that Midna had once called them a 'tribe'.

"This is why he led the Sheikah from the deserts and into Hyrule. Their history is written in blood and shadow after that. Sheik was…is the mad guide who led his race to obliteration. It was not, I know, the Path he intended for them, but one man cannot divert the flow of Time even if he knows it shape and way of coming. That is not not why you should be wary of him. No, he wrought much greater sorrows than the loss of his people, child, some that you know."

The scent of ground chili pepper and metal wafted through the air, like catching the smell of roasting dinner through an open window. It made the back of his throat burn slightly.

Link ignored it.

"Sheik left Hyrule after the genocide of the Sheikah, taking with him the few who would still follow him, leaving behind the fewer who remained loyal to the Royal Family. Know this, child – Sheik is no friend to your kingdom. He swore vengeance on Hyrule, on the line of Harkanian, on all who served them. He swore that his return to the land would always bear with it ill-tidings, dark and dangerous Paths he would, by his own hands, bring about." She closed her eyes, as if this part wearied her and soft again, softly. "He made good on his promise, young one…and I cannot say in any certainty his rage is spent."

Link didn't say anything. Refused to say anything and Nooru looked up at him, eyes ancient as a grandmother's. Her grin wrinkled her eyes tiredly.

"You do not trust my word."

He hesitated…then shook his dusty blond head, _'No, not really.'_

"Ah…then you shall have to hear why it is the Gerudo hate him. Understand, it was not always so. Those that lived before the time of my grandmother held in their hearts sympathy for the Cursed People. Sheik chose to destroy that. Years after the war, a young King of the Gerudo came among us once more. A male born once every hundred years who reigns over our tribe in sovereignty. On the eve of his eighteenth birthday, Sheik returned to the Gerudo Desert. He spoke not of his purpose in coming. He said nothing of vengeance in Hyrule and his oath of rage was forgotten.

"He befriended this young King of Thieves, mentored him in magic and he became a mighty and powerful sorcerer who led our people to a greatness never known to us before. It was a time of great wisdom and prosperity. The young King looked to Sheik as one does a brother, lived in awe of him and they were friends of the kind you rarely see in this world." She smiled a smile so very bitter. "We know not what happened then. They went out one day into the Desert Colussus. Only the King returned. From that day on his was changed, mad with visions of power and conquest. Sheik was gone and uncontested our King began a dark quest for the forbidden artifact…the war bringer, the Triforce."

Link felt every particle of air in the room stand still, stopping on his tongue and in his throat and suddenly he wasn't breathing. It wasn't magic. Though Nooru's static magic hung heavily around her. The scent of her Art was a jumbled collage of a thousand women, of a uncounted Gerudo, like a hundred generations of priestesses, their ways, their thoughts, their magic settled in the body of one girl. She said her memory was long and he found it increasingly hard to meet her ancient eyes and register the truth in them…ugly and old and unforgiving.

Nooru's eyes shone too brightly in the dim light.

"We know not how…but Sheik is the cause. This man you follow, is the reason for all your despair and all your sorrow, young hero, for what call would there be for a hero if the evil had never been?"

Link shook his head.

"That's…" he began, but hadn't the faintest how to go on.

"This King of Thieves," Nooru murmured, "you know, young hero. Twice over, you know."

"Sheik did not create Ganon," Link said at last, frightened by the absolute and blackest rage that stole over him. It was an instinctive and reflexive thing. His bones ached, throat burning with the memory of ozone and black magic, fear, blood and hatred – an overwhelming and all consuming force of darkness. He closed his eyes and whispered, "No one _created_ that."

"I cannot tell you a Sheikah's strange heart," she consented. "I do not know if he moved with vengeance in his action. I cannot tell his motives. I only have the memory of my bloodline and these are their truths. Take and do with them as you will."

"Why warn me?"

Nooru smiled very, very tiredly. "Because there is one within me who knew you once…a very long time ago."

Again he felt her magic stretching out to him, not imposing, just reaching into the fringes of his awareness and hanging like a reminder. It felt old and hot like Sheik's did, but not pure like Sheik's did. Being near the Sheikah's magic felt like the sun and inhaling a high concentrate chemical compound. Nooru's reminded him of crouching by an old, roaring black smith's furnace, of meeting someone familiar, like nostalgia… and suddenly he understood what she was looking for in him. It didn't surprise him, really. It always seemed to come to this.

He sighed. "The ancient hero was an adopted member of the Gerudo. A sage knew him."

Nooru nodded. "Nabooru. She knew your ancient hero. She knew you. As such, _I_ know you."

"Why," he asked softly, "do you all look for him in me?"

"Oh, child," she sighed, her too young voice carrying such weight and Time in it and it occurred to him only then that Sheik spoke the same way. Her eyes spoke her apology. "I'm sorry. But you, like me, are what they were; echoing though Time. The spirits of my ancestors sit in my heart, as the spirit of the ancient hero lives in you. We are them, in a way."

"I don't believe that," he said quietly. "I can't."

"Is that why you run, child?"

He looked at her, blank with disappointment.

"Yes, I can see that. I cannot imagine what confusion you live in, the spirit of a Divine Beast trying to bear the spirit of a Hero. There's much magic in you, of a far wilder kind than can be held in a human guise." Her voice and her gaze held deep wells of sympathy, but no answers. "There is no reconciling this. However, let me offer you what wisdom I have, though it may not give you respite from this duality – You _are_ the living reincarnation of the ancient hero, this is so…but that does not _make_ you the ancient hero in actuality. You are your own being and shall always be, wild and fierce as that other spirit burning inside you."

He let her reach out a hand and take his again, holding it and examining the shape and wear of it.

"You are touched by a Goddess, child." She said this reverently. "The Brave Lady loves you, maybe more than she loved _him_, even." Nooru looked up at him somewhat critically, brushing a stray wisp of bangs from his face and tracing the curve of his eyes until he closed them. "And I believe anyone who truly loves you, Link, loves the wolf in you more than the hero, if that means anything."

The Ordonian smiled and its wounded shape revealed the heartache.

"If she ever loved me," he murmured, "she would have never – oh." He broke off.

Nooru's mouth tasted like something familiar, something he didn't have a name for and warmer than the lips of a living person should be. Her hand had slipped unnoticed to the back of his neck, pulling his face to hers and holding him there as she breathed spice and fire over his tongue and into every marrow of his bones. It hurt, but it didn't really. It felt like sunlight warming the inside of his skin, like his bones were rods of cherry-red metal at the core of his being and he was burning up from the inside out. It felt like Midna gripping the back of his neck, fingers buried in his fur, the white-hot joy of the change rising up in him, burning out everything that wasn't twilight, moonlight, instinct and _her_…

Then it was over.

Nooru pulled away gently, brushed a hand along the corner of his eye to his temple and murmured something like an apology. He hadn't seen her remove the veil and he didn't open his eyes until he heard the rustle of cloth being replaced.

"That was all my magic. I could not, with the memory of these within me, give it to Sheik," she said, turning back to her plants. "I sense the Shadow coming. It waits at the edge of my wards for the full fall of night. Keep my warning in your heart, child. Do not forget who you travel with or that once, Ganondorf himself feared a red-eyed waif." She never looked at him. "Go."

But Link was long gone, run into the desert night.

The Shadow was breaking through the barriers.

**_Author's Note:_**

_If anyone is confused, merely say so and I shall endeavor to explain to you what the heck it is I'm doing in this chapter. Apologies. I'm finishing up my senior year and I have…probably heaped my plate too full of academic nonsense. Either way, it's been impossible to write anything. Furthermore, I've been working of a piece of original fiction and lost touch with this piece. Sorry about that, genuinely sorry._

_In this chapter, finally touching base on a bit of that Hyrulian history I wanted to talk about. I also managed to jam in some Sheikah history. Or rather, the Gerudo version of Sheikah history. But there's wicked things a coming. I hope this very lengthy chapter will tide some of you over. I'm sorry you had to wait so long and then get this sod instead of something amazingly good. I just…I'm so sorry. Really I am. Beta this, I just put it up fast I could in the spare time I've gotten lately. Thanks again to all the patient and lovely people still holding out on this story. You're why I keep writing._


	13. Banish

Banish

_During the Fourth Eve of the Twili's banishment, a great Dark Horizon came into being in the east. _

_Beyond the Veil laid a world of darkness, fashioned in the likeness of Hyrule, but utterly devoid of Light. _

_In this Realm, was caged a monstrous evil, over which the Twili were given dominion. _

_The key to the cage of the dark god. Thus he slumbered for a hundred years._

_- Accounts as kept by the House of Script_

The history of the Twili people was a history long since buried in the eves of Hyrulian lore, a tale that few remembered save the house of Harkanian and those fussy scholars, who regarded such silliness as bedtime stories no doubt concocted from the roots of far more dreary tales. More likely, the ancestral tribes of the Twili merely fetched themselves away into the Deep Desert from which they'd come, from which all those shadowy, magical desert peoples had come, and been lost in some other country's culture. Quite possibly, the only people left in Realm that knew precisely the nature of their banishment was the Queen herself and her once guardians, the Sheikah who were all dead almost without exception anyway.

The story, had they been alive to tell it, would have been this: That once upon a time, the Sheikah went to war with the Twili, ages and ages before, when there were such precious things to slaughter one another over as the Triforce. The battle shook the foundations of the deep sands, rattled the bones of the desert and sent shockwaves through the kingdoms beyond their borders. The Gerudo have records of it, the phantom war they call it. _'The sands trembled and the air grew heavy, rank with magic and murder. A war fought beyond the long miles of the desert, we stood at the very fringes of its horror and still we were afraid.'_ Only a very clever historian would put two and two together and only a very remarkable one would know:

The Sheikah won.

That, Howll thought personally, was the beginning of the end for their people. After that, all their history was written in blood and black magic and banishment, ambition and agony, loss that trebled even now in the memories of their elders. They were the first of their kind, of such mad hubris to stand against the gods and the first to suffer their wrath. The creation of the Fused Shadows and the folly of their people. It seemed so long ago, now, that such ambition that driven them to battle and self sabotage and betrayal of all that they knew – all for the sake of a toy of the Three and the Land of Light.

In the end, though, they'd been sent to a world far more to their suiting. Or that's what they told themselves in the dark, in the semi-light, when they tried to convince themselves there wasn't some deep nagging part of them that lusted after sunrise. Howll, personally, had never been discontent with the perpetual twilight. The air of his world seeped into the skin of a magician, soaked his or her soul in the potency of its potential energy. It was comfort to him when nothing else was.

While he waited in the foyer, Howll briefly let himself enjoy the feel of those unseen ripples, gentle chords of living air and Song that could murmur so sweetly through you…then be used an instant later to rip you apart. Such was the nature of magic and the Twili.

"Howll of the House of Script," called a voice imperiously.

He opened his eyes – when had he closed them? – to see a figure clothed in deep burgundy and black trimmed gossamer come through the opposite archway. Her hair was cropped short, the color of burnished silver, hacked and feathered gloriously around a long and elegant face, a smooth complexion of covetous blue gray and eyes piercing shatter-the-world green. Hers were the kind of eyes that _could_ shatter worlds, yours, everyone's. They held a promise of violence and motion and Howll thought – out of all the Houses in the Realm of Twilight – only the House of Battle and their matron mother, had never grown lax. When Zant had risen up to take their world, only the Lady War and her clan of hundreds had fought back, much to their tragedy – the Lady of Battle was a widow now and lost two daughters. She wore her grief like orbs of hellfire in her irises.

Howll lowered his head briefly, in deference.

"Lady War," he acknowledged. "Thank you for seeing me."

War, the head of the House of Battle, stood before him with her slim shoulders set back, her lovely chin held high and a kind of wicked amusement in her angry eyes. "What brings the envoy of princess Midna to my doorstep? Surely nothing that I'll like to hear, little record-keeper."

The historian ignored the jibe. "What I'm here to speak of is of grave importance and requires some…_subtlety_."

She grin was feline. "Secrecy."

He inclined his head politely. "As you wish."

"Speak quickly then, Howll, because while I have a certain tolerance for _you_, I cannot abide your mistress and I must require that you keep reference to her at a minimum lest I grow enraged and snap your neck in my passion," she commented glibly. She inspected her nails a little, slim little fingers curled in like a cat inspecting her sheathed claws. "Which would, really, be a shame. Despite your preference for serving spoilt little girls, I find you clever by a half."

Howll snorted in a decidedly disrespectful way and folded his arms over his midriff.

"I don't come here to ask you like the princess anymore than you do, only that you would cast your allegiance with her and those who stand with her. In light of all that has transpired these past few days, you – certainly you, least of all – cannot think that there isn't a great upheaval coming. You are the matron of Battle." He lowered his chin a little so he was looking up at her, his red eyes thinned a little dangerously below the slim arch of his brow. "You know exactly what's coming, don't you?"

"Oh look at you," she crooned. She reached out and caught his chin easily, tipped his face up and smiled. "Don't try to be stoic with me, word-watcher. I know about you."

"Then you know I'm not interested in talking," he retorted, unperturbed.

She smiled again, baring those pearly teeth. "Nor am I."

He swatted her hand off with a light flip of his wrist. He wasn't so naive to assume she hadn't _allowed_ him to do so, however, and then only out of an obscure civility that she seemed partial to showing him. Any other messenger would have had their arm twisted up and very possibly broken in the span of a split second. As it was she just smiled that strange grin, an ill-tempered crescent moon of pleasure and it occurred to him that all the Houses seemed to prefer utterly mad women to be their reigning leaders. Expertly, he ignored her grin and the proximity at which she stood to him; which was probably closer than a matron mother of a High House should be standing to a lowly third-son of a middling bloodline. Honestly, compared to Midna in her younger years, this was nothing.

"Will you side with us, if the need arises?"

"You mean will I give my loyalty to that child, the prodigal princess?"

"Midna."

"The brat."

Howll inclined his head, consenting to that.

Lady War heaved a great sigh and tilted her head just so, sweeping her cool green eyes over him, like emerald suns pouring their heat over his face and shoulders. Standing before her, Howll managed to feel quite small and young indeed – odd because it was a source of pride for him that very few people, not even Midna, the ruler of their Realm, could make him feel small. But then again this woman of the Twili had been alive for far longer than him. How old she was exactly was the bet kept secret of her House, but not so obscure that he didn't know she was at least the tenth eldest Twili in the Realm. (Though, easily, the best kept. She didn't look a day older than Midna.)

Nevertheless, while the Lady War could make him feel smaller, not even _she_ could make him afraid. And, as if it were the most natural motion in the world, the historian lifted his chin and gazed coolly up the half inch difference that she (the high head of the House Battle) had over him and allowed the dangerous undercurrents of her power to shudder through him as easily the pulse of magic in the Twilight. He didn't bother to tense or set his will against hers as if it would make a difference. Besides, he wasn't scared. A trait, he knew, she respected more than any other. True to his prediction, her lips parted in a grin all the more delighted – it seemed – with his impropriety.

"Oh, what games you play for a man who says he is not interested in talking." She shook her head pityingly, mocking. "You know I will not lay allegiance with her, Howll. You're very clever, so very clever, and I know you know that already." She leaned near, eyes level with his and utterly consuming. "So why are you here?"

"Because I am quite possibly the only Twili who thinks you're capable of anything but so much vengeful whining."

She narrowed her eyes, though her smile remained, paradoxical and fearsome. "You have tongue, boy, take care with it."

"Has the House of Lyrics approached you?"

"And what if they have?"

"They haven't. They won't. They think your House cannot stand after what happened at the Siege of Twilight. They think you're an old tiger, War, that you've lost your teeth and they don't even calculate you into the equation of our coming conflict. Is that the kind of House you want ruling our kingdom? One who thinks of you as such, one birthed from usurpers and treachery?"

"Manipulative little thing, playing the usurper card. If only my heartstrings were so easily plucked. The fact remains: I will not answer Midna's call."

"Proving to Sivu and his ilk that you _are_ a useless old House of cards."

"What do I care what they think?" she laughed, tossing her hands and her head with flippant dismissal. "You do not know what I think of Sivu or his coup. Perhaps I approve. Perhaps it's time that the reign of House Midnight ended, decrepit and decaying House that it is. Mayhaps it's the right thing, to end Midna and her orphan House of one."

"If Sivu takes power, that's exactly what he'll do," Howll retorted, not rising to her bait. "The second order of business, however, will be the dismantling of all the Old Houses. All the First Families will be removed from power. I do believe that you are among their number, are you not?"

"You do not know that Sivu will do any such thing. Why would he fight us when he can recruit the Old Houses to his side and stand against the princess?"

"Because the Old Houses will _always_ stand with Midna. They owe her a debt."

"And_ I_ do not," she replied sharply. "The only idea that might constrain me or my House to her service is that of nostalgia and I have no use for that."

"Oh yes," snapped Howll, "you who spends her days communing with the past, abandoning your living for your dead. You, War, are in fact _consumed_ by nostalgia. Tell me, do you even remember that you have other offspring because – esteemed mother – you seem not to notice?"

Which was, he knew, a step too far for him. All at once, the chords of Song in his body seemed quick enough to shake him apart, the tension between he and her so treacherous he momentarily entertained the idea that this woman could very easily put her delicate little hands up to her dainty wrists into his ribcage and rip his still beating heart from the mess. Her command of magic was second only to Midna's and her penchant for violence second to no one. He should, really, have been quite terrified. As it was she just stood over him, radiating her terrible rage and boundless fury bound up in those hellfire eyes and the dead of her House. She stepped in close and leaned her face into his, those bright furious eyes inches from his, threatening to devour him and his words that went too far.

"My House and my House alone stood before the darkness of Zant's unholy power, his dark alliance with the black god of old. My family paid in blood to protect the indolent royalty who were so foolish and so arrogant as to think that nothing could or would ever be able to rise against them again. They hung back in their palace and listened to the sound of my family dying in the streets of the outer orbitals, of my daughters screaming their last, my husband becoming one of Zant's bestial pawns and _dying by my own hand_, before he could slay his own sons in his fevered trance. You say you know the shape of my sorrow, little record-keeper!"

Her eyes blazed white hot, seething dwarf stars of green.

"You know _nothing_ of what is coming! I was there when the Fused Shadows were forged, when the gods banished us into the shadows, when the Twili fell from power, when the Dark Kingdom was built, when the Mirror of Twilight was set in place! What makes you think I would pay loyalty to the lonely princess who let my children die? What makes you think I would ever?"

Howll didn't quail.

It would not be a contest between them if she decided to kill him, he knew; the same way Midna could bring down a demi-god of darkness. But he couldn't be bothered to show deference to every woman who could kill him. He'd be forced never to move. Instead, the historian of the House Script simply said something, a few words, the right words, the words that he'd known all along would win him this particular battle and the Lady War instantly ceased in her vengeful rage. He reflected dourly that all these insanely powerful women all seemed so easily felled by language and thanked his genealogy that he was an expert in such. She stared at him, intrigued, a little suspicious. He merely rolled his eyes and looked bored.

"You would go so far?"

Her inquiry was mild, genuinely curious.

Again he heaved a sigh.

"Look at it this way, Lady War. If you would not like to be in debt to Midna, perhaps you would not mind putting your allegiance under the banner of another."

"That is presumptuous of you, Howll. By all rights I could kill you for suggesting it."

"If you were interested in killing me you would have." He arched a brow. "I know how you favor action."

For a moment she didn't say a thing, merely studied him for a long and curious moment. Then:

"What would be the nature of my favor?"

"Whatever you like, so long as we have your alliances."

The Lady War, smiling her most vicious and treacherous grin, leaned in and gently pulled him forward, mouthing the value of her outlay in the grooves of the historian's waiting ear.

-_lore_-

A girl was bleeding to death in his arms.

And he could do nothing (again) to save her.

Sheik felt the blow the way one feels the concussion of some great bomb, exploding vibration rattling furiously though the bones of his skull, shaking the Sheikah's very mind inside the darkness of his head, dislodging the cadence of his spell-casting for a fractional half-beat staccato. The second blow hit in exactly that instant. He actually felt his teeth chatter with the force of the strike, a white hot needle of pressure slamming through the soft jelly of his eyes, piercing from one temple into the other and for a moment the world reeled sickeningly and he felt himself come loose from the fabric of the world – then there was screaming. Gerudo shrieked as the barrier bubbled and bowed inward, sagging like a loose sackcloth under the weight of a bowling ball. _'No,'_ said a low brutal voice from the bottom of his black heart. _'No.'_

The dome of veiled light flashed and flared furiously, a piece of caught lightening hammered into a shield of molten gold, and the dent snapped back into place. Outside the perimeter of his Power he felt the Shadow prowling at the edges of his awareness, hovering like a phantom in the darkness beyond his circle of protection. Outside the circle the eight dead Gerudo girls laid gashed and gored, spitted on a blade of smoke and darkness, still as shocked in death as they'd been two minutes ago when the Shadow rent the curtain of Nooru's protective wards like so much cobwebbing and took Mika's head off in the same sweep. (The sound of her fleshy skull hitting sand sent a shock of sick rage through him, like a blow to the soul.) Seven dead later, Sheik realized he couldn't fight the Shadow and protect the screaming women at the same time.

He had to pick one or the other.

It was an old spell, so old even he'd forgotten the shape of it's making…until he cast it. Now he was locked in the mantra of the casting, old words of Power coursing through him like a river of letters and language through a river bed, raging and roiling, threatening constantly to overflow the banks of his mind and shatter the glowing dome of swirling gold runics around them. He was dripping sweat, his entire body lathed in it, his mind, his muscles shaking with the force of the borrowed Power rushing through his too fragile lightening-rod of a body, conducting the magic into solidarity. This was too dangerous, Sheik knew, far too dangerous a thing to do, but it was the only protection spell he knew that would come to a seer with no substantial magic to speak of at the time. He was borrowing time and magic and the cost of it would, no doubt, be terrible. He feared that more than the monster pacing the sand outside his shield.

Speaking of which…

"Let me in, Sheik."

He felt the black blade drag across the runics, like an axe over a whetting stone, grinding at the fringe of his brain until the force of the vibration actually shook his vision. Distraction, distraction. He was trying to breaking his focus.

"Let me in! You can't keep it up; you can't keep it up forever. You're borrowing magic, Sheikah! You're _borrowing_ and you're gonna _pay_!"

Sheik pushed the noise out, tried to tune it out but the acid rain of Dark magic was eating away at his protective barrier, trying to force its way through a thin patches in his spell. He clenched his teeth so hard his jaw creaked, raising his hand and setting it forward like a man trying to stop a charging bull with only his spread palm. The girl in his arms was gasping, gargling a prayer to the dark sky behind Sheik's head. He could not let his concentration go; he couldn't afford to be distracted. The Shadow screamed at him, shrieking inarticulate cacophonies of hysterical macabre madness. The girl was bleeding to death in his arms, limp as strangled kitten, huddled in his hold and gushing red. The Shadow was crouched against the edge of the dome across from him, leaned close as he dared to the crackling gold shield. Murky penlights of red marked his eyes in the darkness.

"That's right. Give, give, give," he crooned. "Give up everything until you're empty. Die for a pack of Gerudo. Die for the farm boy. Die for the whore! Die for the _princess_ and her kingdom of Light! _Die_ Sheik! Die!" He was screaming now. He reared back, blackness eating the starlight as he beat his unholy blade against the spark-spitting yellow wall. "Why," Slam! "-won't you," _Slam_! "-just," SLAM! "-_die_, godsdammit!"

SLAM!

The blade punched through, punched through him, a splinter in his mind and he was screaming, thrown backward while the darkness bloomed in the back of his brain like razor-wire fire and…

… _he's sitting in a field of blood and dirt, soil clotted like old wounds beneath his feet, grainy and scabby through his pant legs. The skies are clouded over and gray and the air continually smells of ozone and burned muscle, of ionized metal and frying flesh even hours after the Hylian spell-caster was cut down, hacked down by raging soldiers left over from the deluge of officer killing lightening strikes. Sheik thinks post-humorously that the magician had had the right idea. With their commanders dead the grunts scattered to the winds, dashing into the shadows of the night where his people could pick them off, two by two, into oblivion._

"_Sheik?"_

_Familiar warmth swims into existence at his back, materializing there in that smooth mysterious fashion they all did, and stands near his shoulder. The other Sheikah wears her battle mask down around her neck, laying bear the network of fine tattoo script marching down over her brow, eyelid, and cheekbone. It is, some have said, a very, very fine cheekbone indeed. Though barely in her thirties, her hair – like most Sheikah – has gone utterly and snowy white, stained only periodically with blood. She's taller than he is, but then again most of his people are…tall that is. He's an exception. He always is. _

"_Sheik, the others are moving back to the main army. Are you coming?"_

_He inspects the skyline, a smooth atmosphere of gray whisked over an ocean of battle. Before the wizard called down the clouds, it had been a blue sky. The canvas around his fingers is frayed and crusted with black-red dust and his arms ache with the repeated hundred-year-old motion of throwing his senbon needles, a wrist flick done a thousand times over with the end result of death at each. A thousand dead, he thinks oddly. How strange the cost of life, it seems, is a single needle and a muscle cramp hours later. _

"_Sheik?" Her voice is soft now,_ sotto voce_. "What are you doing?"_

"_Watching the Paths," he says. "But I cannot make out their shape through the haze of war. Violence is too variable. I cannot See."_

_She touches his shoulder curtly. "Then we are no worse off than our enemies. Tragedy. Let's go."_

_He doesn't move, sits on the hillside in the dried bloody dirt, staring into the inscrutable clouds. _

_A sigh. "No one expects you to foretell the end of this battle, Sheik." Her ruby eyes are stern as her voice. "War makes the future too uncertain to predict, we know that. _I _know that." She crouches at his back and wraps her thin arms around his shoulders, pressing her face into the nape of his neck and murmuring. "What's more, we would follow you into any Path, even one that described our utter destruction." She kisses the place behind his ear, laying her mouth on the usually hidden patch of skin. "Now, there is a lull in battle and I would appreciate it much if my husband would stop sitting alone in the dirt and come back with me."_

_He smiles and tips his head back and – because only the dead are left – lets her lower his mask and lower her mouth to his… _

…and woke up when one of the Gerudo grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him like a poorly stuffed ragdoll. Deliriously, he swatted her off and tried to kick her away, but her companions – all the rest of them, not any less than before he'd been knocked back in time – lashed out and each seized a skinny limb, pinning him with difficultly in the cooling sand. They were shouting in Gerudo, a frantic clash of voices that he couldn't translate through the stabbing butter-knife of fire lodged in his brain, panicky screeches, the sense of chaotic doom, suffocating everything. Through it all, there was a soft, urgent report being said into his ear, one of the smarter girls having pushed the knots of his tangled hair aside and gripped it, holding him still to get her words into his range of perception and…

"–is fighting the Shadow. He's fighting the Shadow, but something is wrong. You _must_ wake up. You must help, Sheikah, you must wake up and help him. Do you hear me? Do you understand?"

And then the haze of pain and the magic backlash ebbed for a second and he saw what was happening.

"_Allah'shah_," he swore and deeply meant it.

Link was indeed fighting the Shadow, if what he was doing could be called fighting in any form. The boy wasn't fighting so much as falling down strategically to avoid being spitted, hacked or sliced in half. Horribly, the Shadow had fallen silent, attacking with a kind of clinical resolution. A kind of dark focus he'd not yet displayed in all their encounters, as if some outside variable had stripped him of his usual mad chatter. Or maybe he just sensed Link was too delirious with exhaustion to appreciate any banter.

Link rolled, reverse somersaulting to flip messily to his feet, narrowly evading disembowelment and receiving a shallow gash just above his knee. The Shadow, though, was at the very least every bit as good at death-dealing as the ancient hero had been and he was pressing Link hard, harder, the hardest he'd seen yet and Link was retreating frantically, stumbling and scrambling desperately under the raining assault, everything he could do not to be cut to shreds under the edge of that reverse-hero blade.

He was hyperventilating. His sword arm and by extension his sword shook visibly. He was moaning softly under his breath, retreating and defending, doubled up like a man with a belly wound though Sheik could see no physical ailment to herald such a thing. More and more, it seemed that Link's eyes had come aglow in the darkness, refracting the moonlight in sparks of pale neon green, like the backlit retinas of an animal. He was literally bleeding magic. It was deep in him, in his blood and in his bones and it was _boiling_.

"_Benz!_" Sheik managed to sit up, shouting though it sent spinning fireworks of dizziness through his head. "_Link! _Link, listen to me!"

The Ordonian heard him, but became engrossed in a furious sword exchange and couldn't be bothered just then to pay him attention.

"Link, you have too much magic, cheh. You need to burn it off! You need to burn it off _now_!"

The Shadow caught Link in a backhand, the flat of his sword snapping across the teenager's head so hard he toppled in the sand and curled there clutching his skull for an instant in agony, then dove sideways when his opponent tried to drive his sword through his chest. He stumbled away, blocked the slashing blow to his face and tumbled away from his attacker, covered in sand and blood. Frantically, he shot Sheik a desperate look of incomprehension, wild-eyed panic that hadn't been there even in the forest, when the darkling had been literally sitting on his chest. The young Ordonian appeared in his mind's eyes as a rippling heat wave distortion, a mirage of hot magic, heat and power pouring off his body in waves so strong Sheik felt the potency it humming through the air around him, like static across his skin.

He was suffering from what Sheik would and did call – when he used to mentor such things – a massive case of magic overdose. Nooru had transfused him with enough magic to kill a cart horse, all its nearest kin, and any neighboring villages besides. That much magic caused a severe disharmonic within the body and soul; Link's spirit was literally vibrating itself free of his body. Worse, Sheik was suffering from the monster of all backlash stupors and could barely stand, much less help him channel away an enormous excess of magic. He was currently seeing crooked quintuple and having trouble moving even.

It was also going to kill the Ordonian within the next couple minutes if Sheik didn't do something.

A couple dozen feet away, the Shadow tackled Link to the ground. There ensued a brief bout of grappling (a contest that was – to the darking's surprise – decidedly short and in Link's favor). The Ordonian twisted under him, wedged a knee between them and in excellent Goron form, threw his dark twin a good ten feet off.

Link managed to stagger bravely up – probably to fight again, despite how obvious it was he could do no such thing – only to take a step and drop ponderously to his knees. For a moment he looked puzzled by the failure of his legs to perform, then a sickly expression came over him, his eyes rolled back and he simply tipped over sideways, collapsing in the sand like a tilted tin soldier. The shadow creature, snarling after his flight into a nearby dune, darted forward to make the kill with a howl, blade arcing up then chopping down in a great glistening black crest …only to thud into the sand where the Hero's head might have once been if Sheik hadn't already tackled Link out of the way. The force of his hasty teleportation knocked both men tumbling down the opposite face of the dune, rolling and elbowing each other painfully until they toppled to a stop at the bottom.

"Godsdammit," spat Sheik, shaking sand from his hair. "Like it wasn't hard enough. Link, are you alright?"

The boy made a kind of deep, animal whining sound that said _'not presently, thank you very much'_. More or less.

"_Benz_!" The seer took Link by the shoulders and shook him a little (though he flopped around in a way that wasn't encouraging). "Link, you've got to listen, _mala_? You've got to take some of that magic and channel it somewhere, anywhere, cheh, do something with it or it'll eat you up from the inside out. You've got to know at least one thing you can do with it, cheh. One spell she must have taught you."

He murmured something…it could have been a name, his, another's, Sheik couldn't know.

"Link? Link! _Shaa_, you've got to concentrate! "

Ignoring his advice, the Ordonian just moaned. Spasms took him, gut-deep convulsions and he gave over to them; throwing his head back, gasping and crying out in a way that made Sheik think there was something far worse happening to the Ordonian than a mere spike of power. He doubled up, panting and clutching his shoulders like there was something inside him bursting out of him, taking and overwhelming, leaving him raw and shaking in the wake of it. Presently he rolled onto his side and started dry heaving frantically.

"Sheik." His voice was a rasp choke. "Something…"

"Is wrong?" Sheik finished, glowering. "Tell me about it."

"It's punishment," said Link's voice, perfectly calmly from behind them. Sheik shifted discretely and was positioned between Link and the Shadow when he stepped serenely from a clutch of darkness, sword swinging idly at his side. "The price of the being the wolf, see? It is a form of breaking, that transformation. A man becoming a beast is a dark magic, you know. One of the oldest curses in the Realms. Or did you think all those stories about witches turning people into toads were a fanciful joke?"

"You're not qualified to give lessons on magic and the nature of its cost," snapped Sheik.

"No, I'm not. But you know what I'm saying is true. Look at you, after all, trembling like that. That warding spell took its price from you, is still taking it. You want to tell me that there isn't a cost to be paid for using dark magic at your leisure? Becoming a wolf day in and day out? That there isn't consequence for that kind of change?" Sheik glowered because – damn him and his nearest kin – that was true and it wasn't something he wanted to be forced to explain in all its infinite detail. The Shadow grinned his evil grin, the one Sheik was growing to loathe. "Using spells like that is self-destructive. Isn't it, little Sheikah?"

"Yes. It is," Sheik murmured. "But you're speaking out of ignorance."

The darkling ignored the add-on, his gaze falling to Link.

"You must have noticed," he murmured intimately and Sheik felt the Ordonian tense. "Every time you changed, you must have felt it. Each time the darkness poured through you. You have to break a little more of your human self each time. Just a little bit more over and over to reclaim that bestial form. Each and every time, all those countless times, losing fragments of yourself to the beast." He grinned wickedly. "Oh, what's with that face? Didn't you know? Didn't _she_ tell you?" And at his side, Link stiffened. "Didn't the princess tell you what she was doing to you all that time, with her dark magic, born of a tribe of traitors and dark wizards? Didn't she tell you what she was taking from you?"

"You're lying!"

Sheik's head snapped around, startled by the volume and ferocity.

Link's eyes burned too brightly, green punching through and overwhelming the blue of his gaze.

"Whine, whine, whine," the Shadow jeered. "I can't stand how pathetic you are. Can you hear yourself? She scraped out half your soul and jerry-rigged it with a wolf's. You're an abomination and you're still panting after her like a dog in heat, so desperate to believe in the very monster that made you. The gods are laughing at you, Hero. Your whore is laughing at you."

Sheik grabbed Link before he could lunge forward, shot him a warning look.

"It's _not_ true," Link whispered loudly.

Sheik leveled a look at him. "I know."

"Nothing but throw-away toys," the Shadow went on feverishly, muttering. "New faces, same story, over and over and over. The Golden Three smirking down on you. Your princess used you and moved on. Poor thing. And no one ever helps their heroes."

And suddenly Link lashed out; seizing Sheik by the arm with a grip so fierce it could have snapped it like a twig. Hazy curls of dark, glittering light began to bleed from his palms, waft from his shoulders and arms like steam. His breath came in ragged growls now, his lips curling back off pearly white enamel that glistened fanged and sharp in the moonlight. His eyes snapped toward him, fixing on the seer and they were so utterly far gone, so bestial and Sheik just stared in stricken awe. Then with a feral noise, like a deep thunder that could and should never emerge from the throat of a human being, he threw Sheik aside and lunged at the Shadow.

"Link! No!"

The Shadow just laughed, leaping back. "Finally, some honesty," he snickered. "The wolf is so much more interesting anyway."

Link lunged at him, a suicide ploy, ducking the decapitator swing, darting and zig-zagging through the rain of sword swings. Impossibly – he penetrated the razorblade shield of obsidian and managed to tackle the Shadow at the waist. But quick as smoke, the creature twisted and cracked the flat of his featureless shield across the boy's head, knocked him winding.

"You spend your days feeling there is something wrong with you, sensing there is something missing, some piece of you ripped out of your gut and your soul without your notice in the night," singsonged the Shadow, gleeful in his torment. "It's because she _took_ it. She _took_ the wolf and she _took_ the magic and left you here with your half soul to howl in your human nightmares. She left you, she left you, _she left you_!"

If Sheik hadn't known better he'd have said the blond spikes of Link's hair were standing up at the back of his neck, like rising hackles, his entire face contorted with a deep lupine ferocity that stole all of the Hero and left only the Divine Beast, clawing its way to the surface in his animal eyes. Irately, it made sense. It was the only magic Link knew. If he didn't die first, he'd become the Wolf and that was magic even Sheik didn't know, deep and primal stuff from the heart of Farore's green world. If he transformed, there would be no reversing it, just like a curse was supposed to be.

"He's baiting you!" Sheik hollered, still struggling with hazy whorls of exhaustion. "Stop falling for it!"

Those blue eyes flickered, the briefest register, but he was far gone, so far beyond hearing him, buried in the Beast.

"Stop listening to him! He's waiting for the magic to kill you and you're letting him! _Allah'shah_, you're making it easy!"

"Oh shut up," grumbled the Shadow petulantly. "You lot spend all your time trying to force your fairytale on people, Sheik. And you know what? You are the number one cause of genocide in this country. So why don't you let someone choose the way he'd like to die, for once, instead of picking it out for him?"

"Says Ganon's pet assassin," Sheik snapped. "You're a liar and a trickster."

"Really?" The dark Link tilted his head, like a parrot. "How so?"

"Midna didn't want to leave him," Sheik said. He looked at Link, found those Hylian blue eyes on him and smiled bitterly. "She's the only princess who wanted to stay, so she's the only one who didn't get to."

The Shadow winked. "Thanks for that," he said cheekily, then cast a spell.

Blackness flooded the air, curling out from the monster like ink diffusing through water around him, solidifying and curling like snakes of black ribbon. The Shadow rippled suddenly, the long bandages of shadow wrapping around him and writhing, smoothing and brightening. A waterfall of copper-fire hair tumbled down, shadows peeled away to reveal borrowed blue skin, eyes the color of dusk.

The mummy wrap of black magic unwound itself faster and faster until at last the final strip flew away into nothing. Until Midna, the Twilight Princess, in all her stolen glory stood in the moonlit desert. Pale light set the air around her aglow, a nimbus of ethereal brightness. Her delicate hand extended invitingly. Her smile was as wicked and wonderful as anything the real Midna might have managed and her voice the exact mixture of glee and mischief that might bring kingdoms and kings to their knees in this world and the next.

"Come here. I'll put that Light out forever."

Link had stopped moving, just staring. His expression told Sheik exactly what would happen, Third Eye or no.

"Link! Don't!" Sheik struggled to get up, failed at it. "It's a cheap trick, don't be an idiot!"

But Link was already moving toward her; his eyes bright with the dangerous loyalty of the Divine Beast and the raw wishful hope of the Hero – the deadliest combination in the world. Tame as a house cat, he climbed the dune to meet her, face upturned and Sheik thought dully that, somehow, it wasn't fair. There was a cold pit in his belly and he couldn't breathe, suddenly, around the knot his throat that could have been magic backlash as much as despair.

"I've been waiting," the Shadow said softly, cruelly, as Link took her hand. "I've been waiting forever. For this moment."

Then, in a voice so cold it shattered all illusions, Link said: "Me too."

And slammed a dagger – Sheik's dagger, he'd stolen it, apparently – into her belly. Then, when her eyes widened, mouth opened, he yanked it out, dropped it, and closed his lips over hers. In all honestly and on his reputation at a seer and mystified prophet, Sheik really hadn't seen that coming.

The surprise of the pain and the kiss stopped the doppelganger cold, a split second shock that let Link step in and press his body against the fake form of the false Twili, seizing a handful of long red hair and gripping tight. He held on with a fierce and angry vengeance, a cold viciousness that said he knew exactly what he was doing and to whom he was doing it. The air was rioting, the acrid stench of black magic clashing with the smell of cut grass and sand. Dark, wild, desert magic igniting the air and setting Sheik's senses screaming. A sunrise of contained fire.

Link held Midna's false form mouth-to-mouth in a manner more liken to a wolf sinking fangs into a jugular than a lover's gesture, like a beast with his jaws around a throat, waiting patiently for the subsequent death. He didn't let go. Even when Midna's illusion shattered, when all that remained was the shadow, struggling and thrashing frantically, Link still held on. Using both hands, he grabbed the doppelganger, cupped his skull in his hands and forced the monster's mouth open, literally _pouring_ all Nooru's magic into the Shadow. Breathing fire and heat and poisoned energy into the monster who'd tried to trick him with an image of the only being he'd never mistake.

Then, on some unspoken signal, Link tore himself free.

And Sheik, dimly, had to admire the Ordonian for his improvising.

The twin swordsmen stood apart, Link spitting discourteously and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. The Shadow stood with his arms held out before him, fingers spread open as if awed by the way their shape melted seamlessly into the blackness of his wrists. Sheik could sense the shift, See it. The Shadow was now the blurry haze of untempered magical discharge, a ticking time bomb of unusable energy. Link had dumped his problem onto his double and it he who was boiling now. His voice carried in it traces of fear and utter, unspeakable rage, like he could have screamed his fury until his throat bled…but he spoke at a decibel just below the usual hearing threshold.

"What did you do?" he whispered.

Link backed away, expression unreadable because it was unkind.

The Shadow raised his voice. _"What did you do?"_

Link moved to Sheik's side and reached down to help him to his feet, grasping his forearm and shoulder to pull him with a grunt. Sheik never stopped watching Ganon's dark creation, fascinated and a little curious. The darkling's black skin had begun to steam and give off a smoking inky haze. There was a terrible sizzling sound, not unlike the pop and hiss of water thrown over a cherry-red pan, save the sound went on forever, like the metal would never cool. The Shadow seemed to be...cracking. Fissures of gray light splintered the darkness of his skin, spider webbing across black flesh, spreading from his arms and crawling up his throat into his face.

Behind him, Sheik felt Link's eyes widen in what was certainly none of Sheik's fascination.

"You couldn't handle the magic," Sheik explained readily.

Link stared at him.

The seer nodded to the shattering silhouette. "What makes you think _he'd_ fare any better?"

The Shadow was on his knees now. Papery patches of his skin had begun to peel away, floating up in the evaporating smoke and drifting away like flakes of sun-dried paint in the wind. He was making soft gasping sounds, half sobbing noises made all the more horrific because – again – in pain, he and Link sounded exactly alike. The same convulsions that had previously racked Link now took him, shuddering and doubled over in the sand. The black magic red glow of his eyes he begun to dim, signaling death or unconsciousness, Sheik couldn't profess to know. This wasn't something he'd ever seen before and – when one lived as long as Sheik had – that was really saying something.

"You can't," gasped the Shadow," you can't…"

And then he started screaming.

"I don't know what's happening," Sheik told his companion candidly. "Back up."

Link obeyed, silent as he'd ever been.

The last of the blackness was peeling away now, the inky steam thinning and dispersing, leaving a still smoking figure on the ground, curled and limp and noticeably not dissolving into water like he had every time before upon demise. No. This time he remained, lying curled in the sand, looking very much the way a tossed ragdoll might, having been used to clean a sooty chimney. In the darkness, thin coiled veins of blue nephrite pulsed slowly through the dusky coal colored membrane of his skin. An elaborate neon tattoo.

"He's…" Link began.

"I know."

Sheik knelt down beside the limp Shadow.

"I'm sorry," he told the unconscious creature at his feet. "I'm so sorry." He spoke to Link, softly. "Your magic broke the spell. I'd say something smart about a kiss to lift the curse – and touching him skin to skin, would have sufficed, you know – but it's not funny, cheh. By the gods, it's been over a century and no one knew. His own people were charged with his imprisonment and no one knew. _Allah'shah._ That he'd do something like this shouldn't surprise me but…" Sheik felt his voice choke somewhere in his throat. He didn't continue.

Because Ganon's black smokescreen had shattered, washed off the inky disguise and the hell-glow eyes, all Dark enchantments and distortions and without them, the Shadow wasn't a monster at all. There was an unfamiliar young man lying in the sand, not a day older in age than Link himself. Actually, with swathe of black Art gone from his skin, he didn't even look like the Ordonian. His face was high boned and fey, human in shape, but he wasn't even Hylian. The growing blue lines on his gray skin gave way the hundred year kept secret: Because the soft hieroglyphs twined elegantly around his wrists and spread up under his shirt and up the side of his sculpted cheek, were the adolescent marks of a Twili.

Ganon's dark assassin was one of Midna's banished tribe.

**Author's Note:**

_I very rightly have no idea what to think of this chapter. Also, apologies once again for the monstrous delay. _

_I'm beginning to see what could be a reasonable ending to this story, maybe, possibly. Your feedback is much appreciated and thank you to_

_any soul patient enough to still be reading. I hope to have the next chapter up within the month. _


	14. Tragedy

Tragedy

"_We were born old so that we may die young. Unlike you, I will die with my eyes wide open. I know the Truth."_

_Sheikah soldier (taken from journals three days before the Last Siege)_

Howll was missing.

Midna had the presence of mind to be more that just mildly alarmed because Howll, dependable, predictable Howll, would never vanish in a time of crisis. And _this_ was undoubtedly a time of crisis. She hurried through the great halls and outside to the streets. The streets of black stone, strange and lukewarm and familiar against the soles of her feet, were a comfort. The seven obsidian bridges she'd have to traverse in her journey, however, were not.

The Twilight Realm had always been a place of contrary peril and beauty in appearance, every land mass in the realm an orbiting chunk that revolved around the Palace of Twilight, drawn to the power of the Sols. In this realm the very land they loved moved in sync to the pulse of its own universe and Midna felt quite suddenly that she had fallen out of proper tempo. Every beat of her heart to the soft slap of her feet on the stone was utterly alien now and echoed hollowly, gloriously in the deafening silence. As if she were some mistimed metronome disrupting the cadence of the Twilight.

The House of Script was in a fifth-shell orbit today and therefore an inordinately long ways away. She had the orbitals of the week memorized of course, and knew the bridge work of this city like the back of her hand – she's built part of them in her life time, after all – but that didn't make sprinting several miles any easier by any account. Midna tore the heavy robes off her back as she ran, magicked them back to her wardrobe back home and raced like a mad, feral thing up the smooth footpaths winding the homes of the old Families. A blur of slender, shapely powder-blue arms and legs, long unbraided hair raked like flame red claws down her bare neck and shoulders. For Link's sake she had set all these things into motion, certain that only she could reap the consequences and now – like always – the politics were killing her from behind.

It seemed stupid now. All of it.

'_It seems I am constantly ill-suited to serve my people and my friends alike.'_

"Howll!"

She threw open the door of the great manor, banging them wide with a slamming thrust of power and panic and –

Howll looked up from the mess of books and scrollwork he'd been bent over, glowering at her with all his usual condescension. "_Yes_, princess?"

"What…" She paused over the words, proofread them, continued: "Pray tell, are you doing?"

"Attempting, my capricious princess, to prevent your kingdom from falling into complete and utter anarchy as you would undoubtedly allow it to if I did nothing to curb your insatiable appetite for stupidity. Furthermore, I might point out that I do not approve of this plan and when it begins – magnificently I'm sure – to fall flaming to pieces, I would remind you that I told you so." He was breathing a little hard by the time he'd finished.

Midna smiled affectionately at her advisor. "Aww, you're helping me."

"You are an insufferable fool and if I didn't Sivu would trample you into the Dark Dust!"

"Such sweet nothings."

Howll threw a book at her and she caught it in a lightening fast tendril of her hair, flipping it idly open. "Has Sivu already gathered the Houses?" she inquired imperiously, pacing around the table, leafing through pages.

"Yes, but you were right about him. He waited until after he secured the remaining Council. We managed to move first because of it – stop smirking, just because you had a moment of insight. No one's impressed – He's been planning this move for a rather long time. We've suspected as much. There are alliances between the High Houses, Lyrics at the head of the coalition and they've already rallied against you." Midna had the presence of mind to notice that her dear record-keeper was pouring over an array of vastly impressive looking maps and battle stratagems. There was a small flock of Snippet Stones hovering about his person like eager birds. He gave her a cool look. "Luckily, our own alliances have been set. You have the old Families at your command."

"Sivu counts who among his allies?"

"The House of Myst," said Howll grimly, "then the House of Shudder, Ash, Ambrose, and Aphrose. Also Grove, Mettle, Tremor… and the House of Bell." He took a darkened Snippet Stone from the tabletop, rolling it thoughtfully between his long ebon fingers. His dark eyes seethed behind the even cyanide in his syllables. "Lady _Bella_ has betrayed us. She's taken her power to the House of Lyrics in hopes of claiming a higher place in the hegemony. She's shattered her Snippet Stone, though she was kind enough to send her best regards when she declined the call to arms."

He raised a slim hand to show the burned white scar seared into the flesh below his index and middle finger. Before he could insist manfully that he was fine, Midna put her book down and captured his wrist, closing her hands around his in a manner much similar to a prayer. When she released it, the burn was only a faint gray spot in the centre of his black palm. He inspected her work critically, as though he disapproved, before moving restlessly away from her again. He spoke without looking up from his work.

"I'm sorry, princess."

"Why? Because you couldn't convince a traitorous old bitch to honor her promises? We are Twili, Howll, treachery is what we do." She waved a hand flippantly. "It's fashionable."

His tone was mildly accusing. "_You_ don't think so."

"No. I don't." She snapped the book shut and tossed it to her companion who caught it without looking up from his work. "But I know that all the new Houses do. Bella's treachery is unusual for a head mother of an old Family, but we'll deal with her when the time comes. We have Dusk, Murmur, Story, Flight, and Melody, all of whom are of the old tribal Families. They're strong." She took a place to the other Twili's left. "Did the House of Battle answer your summons?"

Deadpan: "No."

Midna sighed. "Very well. I can still use Murmur and Dusk to lead the –"

"Nevertheless," he spoke up, interrupting her, "they are yours, Midna."

"Oh?" She arched a brow. "And how, dear Howll, did you manage that? Lady War hates all that I live and breathe upon."

He eyed her disdainfully. "Just because _you_ have the diplomatic grace of a drunken _dannforb _does not mean that _I_ am without persuasive clout. I spoke with Lady War myself. Furthermore, as much as Battle hates Midnight, they hate the House of Lyrics more."

"You sly dog, she's over twice your age."

He ignored her innuendo. "We are outnumbered, princess."

"I _did_ notice. Incompetent I may be at your form of diplomacy, counting things is something I'm rather proficient at when the mood strikes."

If Howll wanted to say something to that he didn't. Instead he magicked a couple extra books from the nearest shelf and waved them down on the table, paging through themselves until they halted at the directed chapter place. The shorter Twili investigated these tomes with unnatural interest. Midna took the opportunity to note that her companion's hands where he reached for nearby scrollwork, were trembling just slightly and because she'd known Howll long enough to know his were hands that didn't shake, she read significantly into it.

"Howll," Midna said delicately, "the House of Script is not listed among allies."

"Nor enemies. Script, like the Houses of Law and Mystic, are neutral. As always," he replied evenly.

She eyed him. "And you?"

"My House," answered Howll coolly, "does not speak for its individual members. I will not leave you to utterly botch up this attempted coup on your own."

There was a small quiet after that, a quiet between the two Twili that seemed to stretch on for an inordinately long time. Midna took the time to scrutinize her companion with extreme prejudice and he took the time to pointedly not look up at her and rifle importantly through several sheaves of mapping she didn't know anything about. He probably had the entire battle plan etched out in his mind, all the little intimate details of the Houses accounted for, their histories and hates stacked neatly into the stratagem against the coming onslaught. No member of Script knew their history like Howll and it occurred to her that her advisor, her bookish and order-oriented friend, was probably suffering unparalleled anxiety-bordering-on-panic attacks. For her. She found herself suddenly and unreasonably saddened by this and immediately moved to smother the feisty ember in her ribcage.

"You know what this is?" Midna asked him seriously. He looked up; blinking at her with what might have been honest curiosity. She nodded, pursing her lips. "This, this is a _moment_. We're having a moment, right here, now." She ignored his throaty growl of irritation and added resolutely. "Howll, we should hug or something."

"Your highest majesty, princess of Twilight?" he addressed her formally.

"Yes?"

"Shut up and help me plan this battle." He turned his gaze away again, lowering his voice. "Tomorrow, the kingdom of Twilight may go to war."

-_truth_-

"So…he's run away from you too."

The first time Ashei met her, some weeks ago, there had been something in her voice that Ashei couldn't recognize, or something that she'd forgotten somewhere during years and years of disuse. It wasn't until just then, hearing it the second time, that Ashei recognized what it was: The sound of grief.

Ilia didn't wear her regrets like most women did, bitter and simmering behind quick glances and quicker fluting laughter. Rather her mistakes seemed to rise in her gaze like sunrise and hang there in suspension, shining and bright and aware. She waited for them on the porch of her two-story house, hands folded before her, wearing a face worn smooth by a storm neither Shad nor she could dare to comprehend. In a distant and intellectual way, Ashei understood some of what that hurricane had entailed – a lightening strike of laughter and motion and when it moved on you were left standing in the wake of that, numb. This pretty golden-haired girl, with a face like a faerie and eyes like old jade, had grown up with that in her backyard, learned to read with that, played games with that, ate dinner and rode horses with that.

And now, apparently, she'd lost that.

Ilia was looking out the window now, a mug of cooled tea set on the table between her elbows. Shad was fidgeting. Rightly so, he'd just finished painting what could be considered a rather hostile picture of Hyrulian nobility and its arraying against a close friend of hers. Nevertheless, the pretty Ordonian merely picked up her mug, took it to the sink, poured it out in the basin and proceeded to wash it out. Ashei watched her move, impatience coloring her mood only slightly because – again – she understood some of the weight in this girl's movement and why it had the power to slow someone as unflaggingly bright as Ilia of Ordon, but for gods' sake this was urgent. Shad inspected the table top closely, tensely aware of something in the room, some unspoken hurt that shivered threateningly among the cracked chinaware and hand-knitted curtains.

After a moment Ilia stopped scrubbing and just stared at the cup in her hands.

"He left Ordon…a while ago." There was a momentary pause, an inhalation. "I lied to you, Miss Ashei. When you came here, looking for him last time I told you he went to Lake Hylia only a week before. Truth be told, he's been gone a lot longer than that."

Ashei didn't look away. "I know."

Ilia just laughed. One short note of amusement and Ashei could tell she was not surprised either.

"It was just outings at first, little trips to other prefectures, you know. Then it was missions from the crown and he'd come home looking…" she struggled for some idiom to speak it. Gave up. "There's something in him that won't let him stay. It's always been there. And, in a way, I always knew this would happen, you know? That he'd…leave. Even before the Twilight came down on us and the bublins came here, there was that nagging fear in the back of everything. I mean, we all knew, just never said anything about it – that Link was full-blooded Hylian. When you're a kid that kind of thing doesn't seem important, you never think about it or what it might mean or that somewhere someday it might be the only thing that matters."

There was some anger there now. She was gripping the mug too hard.

Shad shifted in his chair, like someone who wanted to say something, but hadn't he words or the know-how and realized it. He ended up exactly where he'd started, looking sad for her and sorry as hell, sitting there helplessly.

"Link _is_ a full blood Hylian then?"

"Yes. Father couldn't keep it secret forever. He was the mayor after all and he was the one who promised Link's parents."

Ashei sat forward. "Yu' say his parents were Hylians, yeah?"

"Yes. If you wanted a firsthand account you'd have to talk to my father."

"Where is your father?"

Ilia hung her cup on a hook over the sink and examined the yard through her window with a funny look on her face. "He died a month ago."

There was a moment to take that in.

"Does Link know?"

"How could he?" There was no anger in her voice. "He's been gone nearly two months, hasn't he?"

"I'm sorry, Ilia. How…how did it happen, if you don't mind my asking?" Shad inquired softly in that gentle way he had, which Ashei could never mimic. "I find it hard to think…Link would leave if your father was ill. He spoke very well of Bo. Spoke of him like one does a father."

"I know. That's why I'm not upset. It was an accident. He cut himself on a sickle while out at the harvest, it took infection and he died a week after. Fast as that. No one's fault, but I hate that Link wasn't here, I hate that he's not part of this village anymore, because he's not. I know he's not. He might have been happy here once, but now…" She stopped herself. "I'm sorry. That's not what you're here for. Link is in trouble."

"Yes. Some trouble," said Shad.

The Ordonian pivoted away from the counter and strode very business like through a door in the back of the room. "You follow me," she called, descending into what looked to be a cellar. It was huge; one wall dominated by the expected stock of foodstuffs, dried meats, canned and preserved fruits and vegetables, crates and crates of grains. Shad was peering at the lot as though it bore some significance. Ashei dismissed him as overly studious – he was probably admiring the variety of flora and fauna – and followed Ilia across what looked like a jerry-rigged wrestling arena to where she stooped before a giant, oaken chest.

"My father kept the village records, family lines, history and traditions all written here. It's the duty of a mayor to know these and keep them safe." Ilia popped open the lock and pushed the lid up, piles of leather-bound tubes glowing softly in the lantern light overhead. "I'm mayor of Ordon now." She selected one scroll and held it out to Shad. "This is the one you want. Maybe it will mean more to a member of Hyrule. In Ordonna Link's parents were just people to be helped."

Shad accepted the scroll but faced a momentarily issue when Ilia didn't immediately relinquish the leather tube; choosing rather to eye him steadily over the document between them and make it abundantly clear that she required him to do all that he promised. Mercifully, she let go before Shad turned any brighter shades of red and left the man to probably ponder to himself how he'd come to be surrounded by so many powerful and frightening women. He murmured his thanks and like a good and dutiful bookworm unraveled the scroll and wandered toward a table, eyes down.

There was about two minute's silence.

Shad looked up.

"Oh," he said softly. "Oh dear."

-_truth_-

"There are little suns burning inside your head!" was their captive's greeting upon waking.

"Shaa...no," Sheik replied. "No, there aren't."

They discussed the dimensional impossibility for a few minutes. During those few minutes, it became increasingly apparent that logic wasn't something this Twili liked to utilize in his dealings with reality (i.e.: "The suns are small enough to fit in your head. That's why there's still space to think.") The longer they spoke with him, the less and less coherent he seemed to grow; his sentences shattering into tangents of biting, shrieking curses only to resume his previous train of thought to its finish. After making a jump from demanding that he be let go, to singing a stanza of some hushaby then back again, Sheik's questions grew noticeably terse.

"What's your name, cheh?"

"I don't properly remember."

"What do you call yourself then?"

"I don't call myself anything." The Twili grinned at the sky, teeth glittering and slightly fanged as Midna's had always been. Bright eyes, the color of sunset and blood swung round, glittering and manic. "_He_ gave me a name, Sheikah. It's not my real name, or it might be, I don't know. I don't remember my real name – like I said, he took it, ripped it out of my head and filled the socket with ash and water. Would you like me to tell you that one?"

He ignored the question. "Ash and water?"

"Drown me and burned me. That's how mirrors feel from the inside."

"He bound you inside a mirror?"

"_Yes_." It chilled your bones how he said that.

Some of what they said they said in Sheikah, softly conversing across the golden lines wrought in the sand to cage him in. The warding circle had been the last of the magic at Sheik's disposal after which he'd glared at Link as thought it were al _his_ fault and passed out face down in the sand. Twenty minutes later he'd come to grumpy, achy, and more than a little stiff, all of which he didn't actually complain about but were made evident by the way he kept snapping at Link to leave him alone and assuring him he was completely fine. To prove it, he'd started immediately on interrogating their captured assassin and, just to be irritating, made sure to do some of it in his own native tongue, which the Twili – for reasons unknown – seemed familiar with.

Link couldn't know the exact nature of what they spoke but at several points during the conversation the former darkling lunged at the barrier, digging his fingers into the invisible veil of air and magic like he could rend it apart and get his hands on the seer's throat. Sheik, for his part, remained visibly unperturbed the entire conversation. Though – for an instant – the Twili shook him. Employing the same trick that Midna had once used to persuade Link's fears into cooperation, the rogue transformed suddenly into another Sheikah. A woman. A fighter, a tattoo running vertical down her cheek, blades and belts buckled at her hips, a knife in hand. She stood just slightly taller than Sheik, was perhaps a little fierce in her thirties with hair already stark white.

Sheik's gaze became red diamond, stainless and cold at the sight of her.

"Link, go get the horses."

The Ordonian felt the desert shiver a little and didn't immediately obey. Sheik glared sharply at him, his bloodstained hair falling into his eyes, glittering and furious and immortal as Link knew they were.

"I said go," he snapped.

Link left to find Epona and Kali only after giving him a look that clearly said, _'Don't do anything stupid while I'm away._' Sheik rewarded his efforts by _glaring_ at him. Either way, Link took his time across the dunes; not ungrateful for a brief period to organize the events of the last few days. Little help that Sheik was, Link had nevertheless managed to divine from the irascible prophet a few solid fragments of reasonably solid fact…or at least some very logically defendable truths, the first of which being – if nothing else – Zelda trusted Sheik.

Quite frankly, if Zelda had not been elected by the Triad themselves as Wisdom incarnate, he would have had some serious thoughts about the Queen's choice in friends. This, of course, struck a little too close to home for comfort, but Sheik was not one to inspire camaraderie and confidence in those around him. Fear maybe; nervousness, irritation, blind fury; the occasional dose of self-induced incompetence, but trust and amity – not so much.

Link pushed the thought away briefly, tugging Ilia's reed whistle from under the collar of his shirt and blowing three curt notes. He sat down in the sand while he waited for Epona's approach, knowing no stable or terrified Gerudo handler could keep the cart horse contained once she heard that song. It was just a matter of time (and how many of those poor girls tried to stand in her way) before she found him. He used the spare time to keep thinking,

Now despite some divergence in their opinions during the last year or so, Link didn't think Zelda a poor judge of character; maybe a poor judge of _his_ character, but not of other people. He trusted her to make good decisions when the need was dire. If Sheik were dangerous, she would have known and acted accordingly. If Sheik were even _half_ the supposed madman that Nooru had described to him in that crumbled Sheikah shrine, then the former Princess of Destiny would have known and she would have sent someone else.

Nevertheless, Link knew a little about lies and the scent and shape of them on the mouths of others and – while he wasn't the expert in them that Midna or Shiek might be – it seemed to him that Nooru at the very least _believed_ that she was telling the truth. Or a version of truth, if not all of it; a historical account that placed Sheik on Ganondorf's timeline and Link felt his stomach turn over; his arms shiver and shudder reactively. The implications burned in his veins and in his belly like the wolf transformation, base and bestial and pitiless. It took more than most of his self-possession not to seize the slighter man and shake him screaming, "How could you not See what he'd become?"

But right now seemed a poor time to bring it up. Truth or not, the Sheikah was crossed-eyed with exhaustion and _crabby_, meaning 'thou shalt ask no questions.' If he broached the complicated subject now, he'd no doubt get a narrow-eyed look and some obscure twiddle-twaddle for his trouble. Best to remain focused on more immediate problems, save the sordid past for sorting at a later date and query on odd happenings that Sheik might actually manage to speak straight on rather than traipse about. Namely:

1: The Shadow was a Twili.

2: Sheik seemed very unsurprised about it.

Well, no that wasn't right. He was surprised that the Shadow was a Twili, but he wasn't surprised like someone unfamiliar with the race of the half-lit realm would be. Rather he was surprised the way Link was surprised – surprised in the way that a magician, who knows the mechanics of his trick rabbit from the hat, would be surprised to pull out a gerbil. They were surprised for the same reason. Quite simply, there shouldn't have _been_ another Twili in the Realm of Light.

During his time with her, Midna had imparted to him the various ways in which her people differed from his own; lest he get ridiculous notions in his head that Hylians were better than her race, which was _quite_ the reverse. First, she wanted to point out that she was not really two feet tall and hideous originally, nor were her people. In fact, on the whole, Twili were uniformly tall, slender, and fine-featured (she said exactly, "A lot better looking than _you_ lot!") They used magic more instinctively than any other race, could live well into several centuries barring any fatal illnesses or untimely methods of demise, and could not – unless imbued with magic of the highly superior kind (i.e.: exclusive royal family voodoo) – exist in their true physical form in the Realm of Light .

Link didn't think she was lying about that and thus the question lay before them:

How was _this_ Twili, psychotic raving lunatic that he was, not only able to retain his physical form but beat the living daylights out of other people with it? There was no doubt in Link's mind that Sheik was mulling over a very similar question. Somehow this strange cursed creature was capable of keeping his corporeal form despite assurances that doing so was quite difficult, nay, bordering on impossible for anyone outside the royal family. The last Twili to do that had been Zant…ironically imbued with dark magics from the same unholy benefactor that had cursed their lonely assassin.

And more to the point, Sheik seemed to _know_ that.

Why the seer had declined to mention that he knew anything about the Twilight Realm, Link didn't know. He certainly _wanted_ to know, meant to find out very soon in the near and immediate future, possibly with a well due amount of threatening if it came to that, but for now he'd be content to address the subject of the feral Twili suddenly thrown to their strange mercies. Link's gut-knot conglomeration of horror, pity, and rage and Sheik's unassailable wall of autonomy, both of which would be called upon shortly to discuss what exactly you do with a mad Twili murderer.

Epona arrived just then, nickering in a manner of deep personal satisfaction. This informed her young handler that she'd laid waste to half a dozen Gerudo citizens on her way here and was supremely proud of it. She pranced about for several minutes while Kali meandered somewhat more stealthily from the nearby shadows and looked on with somber disdain. Link sighed and asked them both along after him as he returned to the dune.

Upon his return the Twili had reverted back to his original dusky blue-gray self and was scowling at Sheik in a way possibly even less friendly than it had been before. Sheik was thoroughly engaged in asking him questions and didn't look up at Link's arrival.

"How long were you his prisoner?"

The Twili snapped something, but not in Hylian.

Sheik threw a handful of sand at him and barked something in Sheikah to which his hostage made a horrible face and answered, "Too long. How long. I don't know. There is no sunrise or shadow just black and drowning in standstill," He shuddered. His teeth were audibly gritted. "How could I count the eons?"

"Do you remember how you were caught?" Sheik asked, unmoved by these dramatics.

"No. There is nothing to remember."

"You're a Twili. Do you remember being in the Realm of Twilight?" Sheik snapped his fingers sharply. "Ne! Here. Look at me. Do you remember the Realm of Twilight? Do you? How did Ganon find you? He shouldn't have been able to find you, so how did he find you? The Twilight was hidden from him, in the desert, I hid it myself so he shouldn't have –" Sheik broke off, with a huff suddenly. He dropped his voice back from a frantic growl to a murmur. "He shouldn't have been able to touch the Twili…not back then."

"I said. I already said. Too many times I've said. Ask me long enough my answer _will_ change, but it takes a long time, Sheikah. Longer and longer. I don't remember how. No one ever catches me. I'm a shadow when I want to be and no one should have found me."

Link exchanged a look with Sheik.

"You were in the Realm of Light? You were in Hyrule when Ganon caught you?"

Those fire-amber eyes ignited, lit suddenly on Link, burning fever-yellow and hot. "I burned the caravan," he said suddenly. His grin was a crooked gash of fangs. Beneath his breath Link heard Sheik hiss and decided he must have known (somehow, he found himself too unsurprised to be angry with the seer.) The Twili sniggered and hunkered down, long fingers raking through the dark rust-colored fray of his hair. "I burned them because it's so cold in those mirrors. I was freezing, but I was burning."

"Link," Sheik said sharply. "Don't let him –"

"I killed a little girl," he breathed. The Twili's face melted, paled, became Link's; grinning maniacally, dressed the dusty green he'd never wanted to wear. "I killed a wife and three men." The mirror Hero dissolved into a tall, dark-haired girl in a black gown, pressing her body, face so near to the barrier she might have kissed it. "I killed those eight little Gerudo whores and I'd gut that Sheikah too." The woman flaked away and left Princess Zelda, garbed in funeral shrouds, murmuring sweetly, "I'll kill everything you love, Hero. I'll kill everyone and make them _burn_ like me."

Link closed his eyes, felt the slow smolder of red-orange flame crawl across the inside of his skin and gather white-hot and dark in his belly.

He didn't look at Sheik. "That true?"

Sheik didn't look at him either. "Yes. I wagons were burning when I arrived."

"You did something?"

"I," Sheik began, then paused. He sighed. "Yes. I stopped the fires, cheh. No one else died but the first five."

"You killed them?" Link asked the Twili.

He grinned fiercely, braced his hands against the wall, back arched like a feral cat he hissed, "Yesss…"

Link studied his face for a long moment, the phosphorescent webbing of green threaded down his temple and wound down his arms, the alkali tang of Twili magic and the noxious chemical odor of Dark Art. Those great cat-like eyes the color of dusk and tangerine and riddled with smoldering holes – sanity eaten through by madness and magic. It occurred to him, this particular Twili reminded him of Midna and Link shook his head slightly.

"No."

The Shadow blinked.

"I've seen Twili kill for Ganon. Cat's-paw." Link closed his eyes. "You are not so terrible."

The Twili _screamed_; spitting in his own language and ground his teeth audibly. The expression that twisted his face was so utterly hideous that it stripped every aesthetic grace from him, left him ugly. Then, abruptly, he began to cry. The two other men had two seconds to be surprised before the madman grew enraged and once again flew into a fit of wild shouting. At this point he switched to a dialect of Twili tongue and in spite of Sheik's earnest attempts to persuade him, he refused to speak to either of his captors again in any language they understood. After a while, Sheik shook his head and withdrew to an adjacent dune to sit down – maybe somewhat less gracefully than usual – in the sand.

"Ah," laughed the seer a bit unsteadily. "To think I never Saw this."

Link waited.

There had been a suspect hitch in his voice when he'd said that, no doubt his usual aggravated front suffering at the hands of exhaustion. Mostly likely, he was just too damn tired to keep up indifferent pretenses. The Sheikah was bloody and battered as Link had ever seen him thus far. His pale hair stuck to his forehead, glued there by blood and sweat. The smell of his magic had diluted so fully that Link could barely discern the scent of him in the stark desert odors and could only surmise this meant a high expenditure of his Power. More to the point p even with all that had befallen them thus far – Link had never seen the stolid Sheikah look so _tired_.

"He's gone out of his mind," Sheik muttered in a way that suggested he were talking to himself and not really to Link. "Not that I'm surprised, cheh. Actually, I'm impressed he's this coherent after a century of imprisonment. He should be…_shaa_…" In a surprisingly human show of weariness, the Sheikah rubbed both hands over his face. "I don't know what he should be. He should be dead is what he should be. This is, ah, how can I describe to you the shape of this treachery when I haven't the means to frame its nature? This is a matter between desert peoples…"

"You know of the Twili?"

"Intimately," said Sheik. The conversational honey in his voice was laced with nightshade. "My people and theirs had the distinct pleasure of slaughtering each other in combat for the better part of several decades. I was born when their tribe and mine met in war and I was twenty when I led them all to their oblivion, brought them screaming to their knees and shattered their pride and power. We fed the desert blood enough to drown _gods_."

Then, like a man startled by a joke, he started laughing.

And Midna's ghost reminded Link that Twili could live as long as this cracking caricature beside him; that this was what Time could do.

Sheik ran slim fingers through the sand between his feet, picking up a handful and letting it sift through his grasp. His dark eyes were down turned, crinkled slightly with what must have been an ironic smile behind the mask. "Heh. The goddesses are laughing at me," he remarked a mite too blithely. "Much more my misery that I have to drudge up the past from its proper place at my heels and lay it out for you so that you can understand this. Cheh…This tragedy is meant for the ears of the eons past and them alone."

Carefully, Link took a seat beside the seer. He didn't mind that Sheik refused to look at him. He waited.

"Our dead lay buried in the desert, beneath shifting dunes and the shallow graves of the dead. Hills of bone and metal so vast…" He stopped, peering promptly elsewhere for something. "Shaa…by the end of it our peoples were so diminished no Path but that of destruction was left to either of us. That was the last war the Twili fought before they made their bid for the Triforce like every other race that ever died screaming in pursuit of the Goddesses' Gift…"

Sheik rubbed his palms together to scrub away the sand.

"After Ganon fell to the ancient hero, the Twili race was entrusted with the guardianship of Ganon's Dark Realm. It was there that the first Princess of Destiny banished the man a century past. His evil twisted it into a world of shadow and malice, filled with his abominations and his monsters. Shaa…it was meant to be their prison for all time and they were the gatekeepers, meant to hold the keys…"

"They didn't know," Link said.

Sheik worked through the non sequitur for a moment. "No. They couldn't have known the One Unnamed was a Twili. They would have endeavored to free him. This complication changes the situation dramatically, as it is not a Path I sought for. I meant to break the Dark Mirror that bound the dark assassin to life. Now, I cannot do this. It would kill him, as was the goal."

The seer looked at Link, eyes blood-bright and brittle somehow.

"I will not kill another member of the Twili. He needs the magicks of his own people to restore him. It's them we must reach, but the way is dangerous. We must escort the One Unnamed back to the Dark Mirror and use it to open a way between this realm and Ganon's Dark Kingdom. It may have lost its king, but the malice in that world remains potent as it ever was. This is the land through which we must cross to reach the Veil and break through to the Realm of Twilight."

The moon overhead hung heavily and bright in Link's awareness suddenly; stars and constellations he knew sparkling like pins of bright fire in his thoughts, the familiar air in his nose and mouth thick and balmy all at once and real. Sheik didn't go on, added nothing to his proclamation. He just sat there, looking tired and expectant. Link felt that his skin was too tight around his bones, that this reality was unbearable and stifling heavy in his senses. Like he wanted to tear through it.

"There is a path from this realm to the Twilight?"

"No," Sheik snorted. "There is a path from this realm to the Dark Realm and from there a path to the Twilight exists, cheh. A tenuous, dangerous, ridiculous to even consider as an option path – even when _not_ escorting a raving mad member of the magi tribe, but I suppose it _is_ a path nonetheless."

Link stared at him.

"Shaa. I mean, yes, Link. There's a way to the Twilight. What's more, we're taking it. How would you like to see Midna?"

**Author's Note:**

_Somewhat less refined than I'd like, but it'll have to do. This story is not dead. I've just started at university and that puts things on the back-burner somewhat. Love and cuddles to everyone who's waited and continues to be supportive. Reviews and ridicule is appreciated equally if its intelligent. Feel free to tell me what you think. _


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